CS304: Compilers

4.5: Construction of a Scanner

• University of California, Berkeley: Paul Hilfinger's "Lexical Analysis, Regular Expressions" URL

  Read these slides.
  

• University of California, Berkeley: Paul Hilfinger's "Lecture 2" Page

  Watch the rest of this lecture.
  

• Stanford University: Keith Schwarz's "FLEX in a Nutshell" URL

  Read these notes. FLEX is a scanner generator. It produces a scanner, given a description of the patterns to be identified and actions to take for each token.
  

• Stanford University: Keith Schwarz's "Introduction to FLEX" URL

  Read these slides.
  

• Torben Ægidius Mogensen's "Basics of Compiler Design, Chapter 2: Lexical Analysis" URL

  Read section 2.9.1. Scanners are usually not written anew, but are generated by tools called scanner (or parser) generators.
  

• The Flex Project: Vern Paxson, Will Estes, and John Millaway's The Flex Manual URL

  Review this manual, which contains details on the Flex scanner generator. The link will take you to the introduction section of the manual. Use the links at the top of each page to navigate to the next page of the resource, reading up through section "24 Limitations". For further information, feel free to browse other parts of the manual, including the "Additional Readings" and "FAQ" sections.