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(flex.info)Start conditions
Start conditions
****************
`flex' provides a mechanism for conditionally activating rules. Any
rule whose pattern is prefixed with "<sc>" will only be active when the
scanner is in the start condition named "sc". For example,
<STRING>[^"]* { /* eat up the string body ... */
...
}
will be active only when the scanner is in the "STRING" start
condition, and
<INITIAL,STRING,QUOTE>\. { /* handle an escape ... */
...
}
will be active only when the current start condition is either
"INITIAL", "STRING", or "QUOTE".
Start conditions are declared in the definitions (first) section of
the input using unindented lines beginning with either `%s' or `%x'
followed by a list of names. The former declares _inclusive_ start
conditions, the latter _exclusive_ start conditions. A start condition
is activated using the `BEGIN' action. Until the next `BEGIN' action is
executed, rules with the given start condition will be active and rules
with other start conditions will be inactive. If the start condition
is _inclusive_, then rules with no start conditions at all will also be
active. If it is _exclusive_, then _only_ rules qualified with the
start condition will be active. A set of rules contingent on the same
exclusive start condition describe a scanner which is independent of
any of the other rules in the `flex' input. Because of this, exclusive
start conditions make it easy to specify "mini-scanners" which scan
portions of the input that are syntactically different from the rest
(e.g., comments).
If the distinction between inclusive and exclusive start conditions
is still a little vague, here's a simple example illustrating the
connection between the two. The set of rules:
%s example
%%
<example>foo do_something();
bar something_else();
is equivalent to
%x example
%%
<example>foo do_something();
<INITIAL,example>bar something_else();
Without the `<INITIAL,example>' qualifier, the `bar' pattern in the
second example wouldn't be active (i.e., couldn't match) when in start
condition `example'. If we just used `<example>' to qualify `bar',
though, then it would only be active in `example' and not in `INITIAL',
while in the first example it's active in both, because in the first
example the `example' starting condition is an _inclusive_ (`%s') start
condition.
Also note that the special start-condition specifier `<*>' matches
every start condition. Thus, the above example could also have been
written;
%x example
%%
<example>foo do_something();
<*>bar something_else();
The default rule (to `ECHO' any unmatched character) remains active
in start conditions. It is equivalent to:
<*>.|\\n ECHO;
`BEGIN(0)' returns to the original state where only the rules with
no start conditions are active. This state can also be referred to as
the start-condition "INITIAL", so `BEGIN(INITIAL)' is equivalent to
`BEGIN(0)'. (The parentheses around the start condition name are not
required but are considered good style.)
`BEGIN' actions can also be given as indented code at the beginning
of the rules section. For example, the following will cause the
scanner to enter the "SPECIAL" start condition whenever `yylex()' is
called and the global variable `enter_special' is true:
int enter_special;
%x SPECIAL
%%
if ( enter_special )
BEGIN(SPECIAL);
<SPECIAL>blahblahblah
...more rules follow...
To illustrate the uses of start conditions, here is a scanner which
provides two different interpretations of a string like "123.456". By
default it will treat it as as three tokens, the integer "123", a dot
('.'), and the integer "456". But if the string is preceded earlier in
the line by the string "expect-floats" it will treat it as a single
token, the floating-point number 123.456:
%{
#include <math.h>
%}
%s expect
%%
expect-floats BEGIN(expect);
<expect>[0-9]+"."[0-9]+ {
printf( "found a float, = %f\n",
atof( yytext ) );
}
<expect>\n {
/* that's the end of the line, so
* we need another "expect-number"
* before we'll recognize any more
* numbers
*/
BEGIN(INITIAL);
}
[0-9]+ {
Version 2.5 December 1994 18
printf( "found an integer, = %d\n",
atoi( yytext ) );
}
"." printf( "found a dot\n" );
Here is a scanner which recognizes (and discards) C comments while
maintaining a count of the current input line.
%x comment
%%
int line_num = 1;
"/*" BEGIN(comment);
<comment>[^*\n]* /* eat anything that's not a '*' */
<comment>"*"+[^*/\n]* /* eat up '*'s not followed by '/'s */
<comment>\n ++line_num;
<comment>"*"+"/" BEGIN(INITIAL);
This scanner goes to a bit of trouble to match as much text as
possible with each rule. In general, when attempting to write a
high-speed scanner try to match as much possible in each rule, as it's
a big win.
Note that start-conditions names are really integer values and can
be stored as such. Thus, the above could be extended in the following
fashion:
%x comment foo
%%
int line_num = 1;
int comment_caller;
"/*" {
comment_caller = INITIAL;
BEGIN(comment);
}
...
<foo>"/*" {
comment_caller = foo;
BEGIN(comment);
}
<comment>[^*\n]* /* eat anything that's not a '*' */
<comment>"*"+[^*/\n]* /* eat up '*'s not followed by '/'s */
<comment>\n ++line_num;
<comment>"*"+"/" BEGIN(comment_caller);
Furthermore, you can access the current start condition using the
integer-valued `YY_START' macro. For example, the above assignments to
`comment_caller' could instead be written
comment_caller = YY_START;
Flex provides `YYSTATE' as an alias for `YY_START' (since that is
what's used by AT&T `lex').
Note that start conditions do not have their own name-space; %s's
and %x's declare names in the same fashion as #define's.
Finally, here's an example of how to match C-style quoted strings
using exclusive start conditions, including expanded escape sequences
(but not including checking for a string that's too long):
%x str
%%
char string_buf[MAX_STR_CONST];
char *string_buf_ptr;
\" string_buf_ptr = string_buf; BEGIN(str);
<str>\" { /* saw closing quote - all done */
BEGIN(INITIAL);
*string_buf_ptr = '\0';
/* return string constant token type and
* value to parser
*/
}
<str>\n {
/* error - unterminated string constant */
/* generate error message */
}
<str>\\[0-7]{1,3} {
/* octal escape sequence */
int result;
(void) sscanf( yytext + 1, "%o", &result );
if ( result > 0xff )
/* error, constant is out-of-bounds */
*string_buf_ptr++ = result;
}
<str>\\[0-9]+ {
/* generate error - bad escape sequence; something
* like '\48' or '\0777777'
*/
}
<str>\\n *string_buf_ptr++ = '\n';
<str>\\t *string_buf_ptr++ = '\t';
<str>\\r *string_buf_ptr++ = '\r';
<str>\\b *string_buf_ptr++ = '\b';
<str>\\f *string_buf_ptr++ = '\f';
<str>\\(.|\n) *string_buf_ptr++ = yytext[1];
<str>[^\\\n\"]+ {
char *yptr = yytext;
while ( *yptr )
*string_buf_ptr++ = *yptr++;
}
Often, such as in some of the examples above, you wind up writing a
whole bunch of rules all preceded by the same start condition(s). Flex
makes this a little easier and cleaner by introducing a notion of start
condition "scope". A start condition scope is begun with:
<SCs>{
where SCs is a list of one or more start conditions. Inside the start
condition scope, every rule automatically has the prefix `<SCs>'
applied to it, until a `}' which matches the initial `{'. So, for
example,
<ESC>{
"\\n" return '\n';
"\\r" return '\r';
"\\f" return '\f';
"\\0" return '\0';
}
is equivalent to:
<ESC>"\\n" return '\n';
<ESC>"\\r" return '\r';
<ESC>"\\f" return '\f';
<ESC>"\\0" return '\0';
Start condition scopes may be nested.
Three routines are available for manipulating stacks of start
conditions:
`void yy_push_state(int new_state)'
pushes the current start condition onto the top of the start
condition stack and switches to NEW_STATE as though you had used
`BEGIN new_state' (recall that start condition names are also
integers).
`void yy_pop_state()'
pops the top of the stack and switches to it via `BEGIN'.
`int yy_top_state()'
returns the top of the stack without altering the stack's contents.
The start condition stack grows dynamically and so has no built-in
size limitation. If memory is exhausted, program execution aborts.
To use start condition stacks, your scanner must include a `%option
stack' directive (see Options below).
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