What does HackerNews think of flex?

The Fast Lexical Analyzer - scanner generator for lexing in C and C++

Language: C

#61 in C
Also flex: fast lexical analyzer generator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex_(lexical_analyser_generat...

Edit: In case the parentheses don't work (percentage encoding didn't), try: https://github.com/westes/flex

I wrote a C compiler* using flex [1] and bison [2] that generated MIPS code. The biggest downside was the rather complex glue code.

At some point ANTLR [3] looked promising, but these days I'd probably write a lexer and recursive descent parser by hand, then generate LLVM IR [4].

[1] https://github.com/westes/flex

[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/

[3] https://www.antlr.org/

[4] https://llvm.org/

* for a subset of the full C89 spec

I remember building funny little DSL-Tools with flex and bison. https://github.com/westes/flex

I used it for AutoSar applications, where you create tailored embeded programs from a DSL specification.