re-cursing lex

[DanKarron at UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU]

How do I get lex to: 

1) read from a user provided buffer instead of a file ?

2) Get lex to throw away output it can't match (instead of sinking OUTPUT
to /dev/null ?) Better still would be to write a catchall pattern that
would make an error string for stuff it could not match otherwise.

3) Get lex to recurse, i.e., call lex again with input from another buffer.

I don't want to get involved with yacc, as that is too complicated for 
my simple mind.

All that I want to do is identify strings like

VARIABLE="value"

from a file or the environment string and

-VARIABLE="value" 

from the command line argument vector.

Once recognized, then parse out the value, or if in error, say something
about it.

I would like to take a uniform approach to reading values from a file,
environment string, and command line argument.

| karron at nyu.edu (e-mail alias )         Dan Karron, Research Associate      |
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