[MUD-Dev] Storing tokens with flex & bison

[Christer Enfors]

On Sat, 1 Jan 2000, Chris Turner wrote:

> On Fri, 31 Dec 1999, Christer Enfors wrote:
> 
> > I'm not sure if this is the proper forum for this kind of question, but I
> > can't find any mailing lists for lex & yacc, and it is a MUD I'm
> > developing...
> > 
> > I want to write a MUD server, and for this I want to develop a LPC-like
> > interpreting programming (or call it scripting if you like) language with
> > flex and bison.
> > 
> > When flex reads a file, would it be a good idea to store the tokens
> > returned from yylex() in a list? I was thinking one list for each function
> > definition, and then having bison read from that list when executing that
> > function, instead of reading directly from the file using flex?
> > 
> > If so, how would I get yylex() to return tokens from my list instead of
> > tokens from the file? Or would that be going about it the wrong way?
> 
> To get yylex() to return the tokens from the list, you'd have replace the
> input routine it uses, with one that fakes input based upon the list of
> tokens.  This is more hassle than it's worth *8).
> 
> The correct/easiest way to do it, is to get bison to call a wrapper function
> that either calls yylex() or pops the next token off the list.

That's what I meant, I guess. I just didn't know you could get bison to
call a different function instead of yylex(). I'll check the man page,
thanks.

> > Or should I simply read the function definition from the file with flex
> > each time I want to execute the function?
> 
> Well this would always work with what you have already.  It might be a bit
> slower.  If you want a real speed increase, you would be better off compiling
> the function into some form of byte-code, which could be run though without
> needing to parse anything.

I thought my supposed stored linked list of tokens was considered
"byte-code", but I guess it's not that simple. Looks like I better hit the
Dragon book some more, I bet this sort of stuff is explained in there
somewhere.

> > Maybe someone could point me to a lex & yacc tutorial that includes
> > writing an interpreted language that allowes user defined functions
> > written in that language, since that is basically what I'm trying to do
> > myself.
> 
> The O'Reilly Lex & Yacc book is well written and contains many tutorials.

Right, but it doesn't have a tutorial that involves storing the source
code in any format for later execution, which is what I'm looking for in
this case.

--
	             -=-=- Christer Enfors -=-=-

       "I do my music in pure machine code using an assembler."
			    - Rob Hubbard




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