Path: csiph.com!xmission!news.snarked.org!news.linkpendium.com!news.linkpendium.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end
From: arnold@skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Looking for the original paper on tuning Lex
Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2020 09:36:22 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 21
Sender: news@iecc.com
Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com
Message-ID: <20-06-008@comp.compilers>
References: <20-06-003@comp.compilers>
Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="40695"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com"
Keywords: lex, question, comment
Posted-Date: 21 Jun 2020 10:42:35 EDT
X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com
X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com
X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com
Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:2529

In article <20-06-003@comp.compilers>,
Arnold Robbins  <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>Vern Paxson presented his work on tuning Lex at the 1987 Washington
>USENIX conference. The proceedings had just an abstract, now
>available here:
>
>https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Papers/TuningUnixLex_Jacobson_USENIX_Winter_1987_pp163_164.pdf
>
>Is the full paper available anywhere?  It looks like it'd be worthwhile
>reading, even today.

Turns out the work was done by Van Jacobsen.  I've still had no
luck finding a copy.

In 1984 Vern Paxson did do work related to Lex; he implemented a version
in Ratfor for the Software Tools.
--
Aharon (Arnold) Robbins 		arnold AT skeeve DOT com
[The code for AT&T lex was dreadful, mostly written by a summer intern.
These days we all use flex which likely does all of the stuff in the
Jaconson paper. -John]