Re: still more 2.5.11 comments

[John Millaway]

> 1. the header produced is a bit large
> 2. Quite a large fraction of the file is effectively chopped
>     out by the preprocessor, but that still requires processing
>     time for every source file that includes the header,

Probably 99% of the file is chopped out by the preprocessor based on a single
symbol. It would not be out of the question for flex to process out the bulk of
the code while generating the header. My concern here is that the improvement
in compilation time may not be noticable. My guess is that the flex header is
small beans for the preprocessor since most of it is discarded.


>  as well
>     as increasing the size of any distribution that includes the
>     header.  Example: I have a 1000 line, 32 kB .l file; the
>     generated header is more than 11000 lines and > half a megabyte.

Yes, it is basically a copy of the .c file. By my estimate, your bzipped
distribution will grow by about 26k due to this header file. gzip doesn't do as
well, though. Either way, it's nothing compared to all the autoconf junk.


> 3. The start condition definitions are in there too (and they
>     would be useful) but they're in the part that the preprocessor
>     discards...

The start conditions do not have prefixes, and will cause conflicts. So they
will have to be prefixed if they go into the header. Thanks for pointing this
out!

> 4. A cross-reference from section 18 of the documentation would
>     be helpful.

Consider it done.

-John

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