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| <div class="titlepage"><div><div><h4 class="title"> |
| <a name="spirit.lex.tutorials.lexer_tutorials"></a><a class="link" href="lexer_tutorials.html" title="Spirit.Lex Tutorials Overview"><span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Lex</em></span> |
| Tutorials Overview</a> |
| </h4></div></div></div> |
| <p> |
| The <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Lex</em></span> library implements several components |
| on top of possibly different lexer generator libraries. It exposes a pair |
| of iterators, which, when dereferenced, return a stream of tokens generated |
| from the underlying character stream. The generated tokens are based on |
| the token definitions supplied by the user. |
| </p> |
| <p> |
| Currently, <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Lex</em></span> is built on top of Ben Hanson's |
| excellent <a href="http://www.benhanson.net/lexertl.html" target="_top">Lexertl</a> |
| library (which is a proposed Boost library). <a href="http://www.benhanson.net/lexertl.html" target="_top">Lexertl</a> |
| provides the necessary functionality to build state machines based on a |
| set of supplied regular expressions. But <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Lex</em></span> |
| is not restricted to be used with <a href="http://www.benhanson.net/lexertl.html" target="_top">Lexertl</a>. |
| We expect it to be usable in conjunction with any other lexical scanner |
| generator library, all what needs to be implemented is a set of wrapper |
| objects exposing a well defined interface as described in this documentation. |
| </p> |
| <div class="note"><table border="0" summary="Note"> |
| <tr> |
| <td rowspan="2" align="center" valign="top" width="25"><img alt="[Note]" src="../../../images/note.png"></td> |
| <th align="left">Note</th> |
| </tr> |
| <tr><td align="left" valign="top"><p> |
| For the sake of clarity all examples in this documentation assume <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Lex</em></span> |
| to be used on top of <a href="http://www.benhanson.net/lexertl.html" target="_top">Lexertl</a>. |
| </p></td></tr> |
| </table></div> |
| <p> |
| Building a lexer using <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Lex</em></span> is highly configurable, |
| where most of this configuration is done at compile time. Almost all of |
| the configurable parameters have generally useful default values, allowing |
| project startup to be a easy and straightforward task. Here is a (non-complete) |
| list of features you can tweak to adjust the generated lexer instance to |
| the actual needs: |
| </p> |
| <div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" type="disc"> |
| <li class="listitem"> |
| Select and customize the token type to be generated by the lexer instance. |
| </li> |
| <li class="listitem"> |
| Select and customize the token value types the generated token instances |
| will be able to hold. |
| </li> |
| <li class="listitem"> |
| Select the iterator type of the underlying input stream, which will |
| be used as the source for the character stream to tokenize. |
| </li> |
| <li class="listitem"> |
| Customize the iterator type returned by the lexer to enable debug support, |
| special handling of certain input sequences, etc. |
| </li> |
| <li class="listitem"> |
| Select the <span class="emphasis"><em>dynamic</em></span> or the <span class="emphasis"><em>static</em></span> |
| runtime model for the lexical analyzer. |
| </li> |
| </ul></div> |
| <p> |
| Special care has been taken during the development of the library that |
| optimal code will be generated regardless of the configuration options |
| selected. |
| </p> |
| <p> |
| The series of tutorial examples of this section will guide you through |
| some common use cases helping to understand the big picture. The first |
| two quick start examples (<a class="link" href="lexer_quickstart1.html" title="Quickstart 1 - A word counter using Spirit.Lex">Lex |
| Quickstart 1 - A word counter using <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Lex</em></span></a> |
| and <a class="link" href="lexer_quickstart2.html" title="Quickstart 2 - A better word counter using Spirit.Lex">Lex Quickstart |
| 2 - A better word counter using <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Lex</em></span></a>) |
| introduce the <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Lex</em></span> library while building two |
| stand alone applications, not being connected to or depending on any other |
| part of <a href="http://boost-spirit.com" target="_top">Spirit</a>. The section |
| <a class="link" href="lexer_quickstart3.html" title="Quickstart 3 - Counting Words Using a Parser">Lex Quickstart 3 |
| - Counting Words Using a Parser</a> demonstrates how to use a lexer |
| in conjunction with a parser (where obviously the parser is built using |
| <span class="emphasis"><em>Spirit.Qi</em></span>). |
| </p> |
| </div> |
| <table xmlns:rev="http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~gregod/boost/tools/doc/revision" width="100%"><tr> |
| <td align="left"></td> |
| <td align="right"><div class="copyright-footer">Copyright © 2001-2010 Joel de Guzman, Hartmut Kaiser<p> |
| Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying |
| file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at <a href="http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt" target="_top">http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt</a>) |
| </p> |
| </div></td> |
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