Re: [HACKERS] flex

Tom Lane wrote:

> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> >>>> flex has a lexer-specific library (libfl.a), but as far as I can tell
> >>>> our scanners don't call it. In fact our build process has no provision
> >>>> for adding -lfl to the link, which I used to think was an oversight, but
> >>>> now it's starting to seem like a good idea. We could ship scan.c et al
> >>>> in the same way we handle the yacc/bison output files, and it should
> >>>> work everywhere.
>
> > This puzzles me a bit still, but it seems to work.
>
> I suppose that libfl.a is only needed to support some flex features that
> we don't use --- but I haven't bothered to dig in and find out what.

AFAIK, flex's libfl.a only contains a main() and a noop variant of
yywrap(). The main() in there only calls yylex() repeatedly so you can
write a scan.l that does text replacement etc. and simply compile the
generated C source into a standalone executable. Our backend already
contains a yywrap() (and a main() of course), so there are no symbols
that libfl.a could potentially resolve. Thus, it's not needed.

Jan

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