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The Automatic Generation of Fast Lexical Analysers
Author(s) -
Heuring V. P.
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/j.1097-024x.1986.tb00011.x
Subject(s) - analyser , pascal (unit) , computer science , programming language , compiler , lexical analysis , natural language processing , chemistry , chromatography
This paper describes lexical analyser generators that accept specifications for the basic symbols of a programming language, and produce directly executing lexical analysers in Pascal or C as output. The resulting analysers are up to five times as fast as the typical interpreted lexical analyser generated from arbitrary regular expressions and actions. An example is given showing how these tools may be combined with others in a compiler construction environment.