3
Lexical Analyzer
What you will learn in this chapter
- The basic functions of a Scanner
- The relationship between a Scanner and the rest of the phases of a compiler
- How to implement ad hoc Scanners
- How to implement Scanners based on FSM theory
- Relationships between Regular Expressions, FSMs and Scanners
- Scanner writing tools – Lex and Flex
- Example Scanner for a C-like language
- Some initial treatment of the Symbol Table
Key Words
lexical analysis, Scanner, lex, flex
In this chapter, we discuss the first phase of a compiler – the lexical analyzer or Scanner.
Parsing is a general term meaning analyzing a sentence to arrive at its syntactic structure. From theoretical viewpoint, lexical analysis is also parsing, only the atoms of the language ...
Get Compilers: Principles and Practice now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
