Lexer

From JargonWiki

The Jargon File

Parts of this article are based on the Jargon File, v. 4.4.7,
a public domain document of hacker jargon.

lexer

/lek´sr/
Usage: n.

lexer: /lek´sr/ n.

Common hacker shorthand for lexical analyzer, the input-tokenizing stage in the parser for a language (the part that breaks it into word-like pieces). "Some C lexers get confused by the old-style compound ops like =-."

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Sources

Source: lexer, in The Jargon File, version 4.4.7.

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