This is flex, the fast lexical analyzer generator.

flex is a tool for generating scanners: programs which recognize

lexical patterns in text.

More information about flex as well as the latest official release of

flex can be found at:

http://flex.sourceforge.net/

The flex codebase is kept in git at:

https://github.com/westes/flex

Bugs and pull requests should be filed against flex using github's

issue tracker and pull request facilities.

There are several mailing lists available as well:

flex-announce@lists.sourceforge.net - where posts will be made

announcing new releases of flex.

flex-help@lists.sourceforge.net - where you can post questions about

using flex

flex-devel@lists.sourceforge.net - where you can discuss development of

flex itself

Find information on subscribing to the mailing lists at:

http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=97492

The flex distribution contains the following files which may be of interest:

README - This file.

NEWS - current version number and list of user-visible changes.

INSTALL - basic installation information.

ABOUT-NLS - description of internationalization support in flex.

COPYING - flex's copyright and license.

doc/ - user documentation.

examples/ - containing examples of some possible flex scanners and a

	few other things. See the file examples/README for more details.

TODO - outstanding bug reports, desired features, etc.

tests/ - regression tests. See TESTS/README for details.

po/ - internationalization support files.

You need the following tools to build flex from the maintainer's

repository:

compiler suite - flex is built with gcc

bash, or a good Bourne-style shell

m4 - m4 -p needs to work; GNU m4 and a few others are suitable

GNU bison;  to generate parse.c from parse.y

autoconf; for handling the build system

automake; for Makefile generation

gettext; for i18n support

help2man; to generate the flex man page

tar, gzip, etc.; for packaging of the source distribution

GNU texinfo; to build and test the flex manual. Note that if you want

to build the dvi/ps/pdf versions of the documentation you will need

texi2dvi and related programs, along with a sufficiently powerful

implementation of \TeX to process them. See your operating system

documentation for how to achieve this. The printable versions of the

manual are not built unless specifically requested, but the targets

are included by automake.

GNU indent; for indenting the flex source the way we want it done

In cases where the versions of the above tools matter, the file

configure.ac will specify the minimum required versions.

Once you have all the necessary tools installed, life becomes

simple. To prepare the flex tree for building, run the script:

$ ./autogen.sh

in the top level of the flex source tree.

This script calls the various tools needed to get flex ready for the

GNU-style configure script to be able to work.

From this point on, building flex follows the usual configure, make,

make install routine.

This file is part of flex.

This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by

Vern Paxson.

The United States Government has rights in this work pursuant

to contract no. DE-AC03-76SF00098 between the United States

Department of Energy and the University of California.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without

modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions

are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright

   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright

   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the

   documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors

may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software

without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR

IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED

WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR

PURPOSE.