Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!mks!alex
From: alex@mks.UUCP (Alex White)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: new MKS Toolkit
Summary: No Lex
Keywords: MKS yacc lex
Message-ID: <444@mks.UUCP>
Date: 29 Apr 88 13:36:02 GMT
References: <441@mks.UUCP> <821@xyzzy.UUCP>
Organization: Mortice Kern Systems, Waterloo, Ont.
Lines: 16

In article <821@xyzzy.UUCP>, rivers@xyzzy.UUCP (Usenet Administration) writes:
> I noticed you are including yacc in the new toolkit.
> What about lex, can we assume that is being included also?

No, you may not assume that is being included.  We don't have a lex yet
that is of sufficient quality to include.

Contrary to popular opinion, lex is not in any way manner or form
necessary for using yacc.  For that matter the original yacc was
written considerably before lex.  Probably few real world applications
actually use lex - e.g. the Unix C compilers use yacc, but not lex.
The awk in the toolkit uses yacc, not lex.  Ditto, Eqn.  Both find, and
expr in the toolkit use yacc - no lex.  Lex certainly has its place in
life - but in practice I personally usually find that while you may
start a program using lex, you end up re-writing it in C anyhow.  Mind
you, I have written several programs in lex alone.