[ale] They were Giants in those Days

[Jon "maddog" Hall]

An engineer at DEC was writing "uwm", one of the first window managers for
the X Window System.

He wanted a startup file that would override the built-in initial values
for the widgets if the user wanted to supply the values in the file.   He
had a choice to write the code for parsing the file in "C" or use Lex and
Yacc to build a parser.   He decided to try Lex and Yacc, figuring that it
would be a lot easier to make changes to the "language" description than to
try and change the "C" program that did the parsing.   He thought "Hey, the
parser will only run one time at start-up...it can be a little slow."

The parser created by Lex and Yacc was so fast he was amazed.  He never
even gave a second thought about changing it into "C".

You might know this guy.   He wrote "The Philosophy of Linux and Unix",
Mike Gancarz.

md

On Mon, Jan 5, 2026 at 4:00 PM lollipopman691 via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> Alfred Aho explains Lex and YACC.  Learning (f)lex and (bison)YACC changed
> my life, for better or for worse.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ssGOC9m8Nk
>
> -- CHS
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