Re: Location revisited, column tracking...

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "John" == John Millaway <address@hidden> writes:

>> In particular, I was pointing out that Flex does not know what the
>> user calls `end of line', it can be \n, or \r\n, or \0, or several
>> of them.

John> Be realistic. If '\n' is the default line terminator, then flex
John> will cover most cases. For the rest of the cases, you neither
John> gain nor lose anything compared to the current scanner.

If your goal is to provide a stripped down service serving a niche,
indeed.  ``Professional'' use of Flex won't be able to use it then.

And the \n issue alone, agreed, does not sound terrible.  There are
the others I mentioned.



>> And what you point out is even more use-dependent that merely
>> tracking the cursor: location can be ranges, can be across files,
>> depend on what is considered a comment or white space etc.

John> I don't know how you can say this. The best part of column
John> tracking is that bison does half the work for you! 

I don't understand what you mean here.  E.g., comments and white
spaces are not related to the parser.

John> The other half of the work requires thankless fiddling with
John> line/column counters in flex actions.

As I demonstrated, what matters is to know what is to be done,
because, there is precisely not much to be done.