Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world. True or False?

From	Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world. True or False?
Date	2022-05-04 11:22 +0000
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<22-05-003@comp.compilers> (permalink)

Show all headers | View raw

Hi Folks,

1. A lexical analysis language that exclusively provides regular expressions
for scanning input can only process regular languages.

(a) True
(b) False

2. Flex provides, in addition to regular expressions, states and a pushdown
stack. This greatly expands the set of languages that can be processed.

(a) True
(b) False

3. Because Flex provides states and a pushdown stack, Flex lexers can process
context-free languages.

(a) True
(b) False

4. No other lexical analysis language provides states and a pushdown stack.

(a) True
(b) False

5. Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world.

(a) True
(b) False

/Roger
[I think that you could easily graft a state stack into any lexer that has start states.
Also, tools like Antlr combine the lexer and parser generators, so they're at least as
powerful as flex. -John]

Back to comp.compilers | Previous | Next — Next in thread | Find similar

Thread

Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world. True or False? Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> - 2022-05-04 11:22 +0000
  Re: Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world. True or False? Tom Shields <thomas.evans.shields@gmail.com> - 2022-05-04 14:14 -0500
  Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world. True or False? Christopher F Clark <christopher.f.clark@compiler-resources.com> - 2022-05-05 15:20 +0300
    RE: Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world. True or False? Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> - 2022-05-06 11:16 +0000
      RE: Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world. True or False? Christopher F Clark <christopher.f.clark@compiler-resources.com> - 2022-05-07 13:15 +0300
        Simple Lexer and Simple Parser [ was RE: Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world. True or False? ] Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> - 2022-05-08 13:34 +0000
  Re: Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world. True or False? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2022-05-06 11:00 -0400
    Re: Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world. True or False? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-05-06 14:30 -0700
      Re: fun with Postscript, was Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world. True or False? gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-05-07 13:10 -0700

csiph-web