Recommended reading

flex & bison: Text Processing Toolsby John Levine.LookInside

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This is part two of a series explaining how to convert example lex and yacc code from Lex & Yaccby Levine, Mason and Brown [1] to work on modern systems using flex and bison.Part one looked at compiling on a modern Linux system.This page explains how we made it compile without error on our Windows 7 system using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (MSVC++9).Note: This page is a bit out of date now, being written for MSVC 2008. See the note on Update for MSVC 2010+ below.

Most solutions we've seen for MSVC involve processing the flex and bison files on a Linux system like Cygwin and then copying the resulting .c and .h files across to MSVC to be compiled. Our solution here lets you put your .l (or .flex) and .y files directly into your MSVC project folder, edit them at will, and then process and compile it all with a single click.

YMMV. No doubt there are alternative and better ways to do it. Please let us know your suggestions.

Update for MSVC 2010+:We were surprised when we upgraded to MSVC 2013 and found that everything we described here just worked for our old MSVC 2008 projects.However, if you are starting with a later version of MSVC, you may find these instructions atWin flex-bison:setup custom build rules for Visual Studio 2010 and up of more use.

Book:

Installing and Updating Cygwin Packages Installing and Updating Cygwin for 64-bit versions of Windows. Run setup-x8664.exe any time you want to update or install a Cygwin package for 64-bit windows. The signature for setup-x8664.exe can be used to verify the validity of this binary. Installing and Updating Cygwin for 32-bit versions of Windows. Apr 15, 2017 Install the example. Open it with the vs2010 converter and it will do the conversion from the 2005.rules to 2010.targets,.props and.xml file. Install cygwin, and include flex, its sourcecode, Bison and its source code. Add the cygwin path to the end of your Executable paths list and the path to the source to the end of your include. Today I will show how to install Shairport Sync on your Windows 10 PC using Cygwin. Installing Cygwin. Devel -P openssl-devel -P libtool -P git -P wget -P flex -P bison Installing libconfig. As you install the tool, be sure to choose an installation directory with NO SPACES in any of the folder names, i’ll be installing to “C: GnuWin32”. At this point if you open a command window and type “flex” you should see: “‘flex’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.”. Installation of Flex and Bison in Ubuntu. Open a terminal by pressing CTRL + ALT + T. Then, type one of the the following commands: This command is more basic: sudo apt-get update. Sudo apt-get upgrade. Sudo apt-get install flex bison. This command is a bit more specific: sudo apt-get update.

There is a more up-to-date book than the one we originally used:Flex & Bisonby John Levine [2] and a better download with more recent versions of Flex and Bison.

The changes to Flex and Bison mean that some of our original settings need to be modified. The graphics below may not reflect these changes.

30 May 2014: See the comments below from Alex Zhondin ('lexxmark') who is the owner of the winflexbison project at sourceforge.Thanks, Alex.

Contents

Setting up flex and bison on Windows - a one-off
Add Custom Build Rules for flex and bison files - another one-off

Setting up flex and bison on Windows

Old instructions (superseded)

Download and install the latest GNU binaries for Windows:
- Flex for Windows.
- Bison for Windows.
- In each case download the 'Setup' file for the 'Complete package, except sources'. As at March 2013, these should be flex-2.5.4a-1.exe (1.2 MB) and bison-2.4.1-setup.exe (3.7 MB). These files have not been updated for a while.
Important: Install these packages in the new folder C:GnuWin32, not the default folder with 'Program Files' in the name. You must not have any spaces in the installation folder name or you will have problems. So when the setup program asks for the installation folder name, you must change it to a name without spaces. We suggest C:GnuWin32.

A new and better download

Download the latest Win flex-bison package from sourceforgewin_flex_bison-latest.zip. The version we downloaded (648 kB, last updated 2013-11-22) contained win_flex version 2.5.37 and win_bison version 2.7.
Unzip and copy the whole folder somewhere convenient. Do not store in a folder with spaces in the path.We use C:GnuWin32win_flex_bison. Make sure you include the subdirectory data which includes the m4sugarstuff.

Create a new project in MSVC++

In Microsoft Visual Studio create a new project: Visual C++ > Win32 > Win32 Console Application.
Select the minimum application settings: Console application and Empty project.

We will make some more changes to the configuration properties below after we've added our files.First we must do a one-off and add the custom build rules for flex and bison files.

Add Custom Build Rules for flex and bison files

You only need to do this step once and it is set for all subsequent projects.

Right-click on the project in the Solution Explorer and select Custom Build Rules...
Click on New Rule File..
Set:
- Display Name to Flex and Bison Tools
- File Name to FlexBison.rules
- and enter a Directory whichyou know will be backed up and be available for future projects.
We will use this 'rules' file in all our flex and bison projects.Save this file by clicking OK and then edit it again using Modify Rule File.
Add two build rules using Add Build Rule, one for Bison and one for Flex. Important: You should add Bison first.
The important entries for Bison are:
- Name = Bison
- Command Line = C:GnuWin32binbison.exe -d -v -b y $(InputPath)
- Command Line = C:GnuWin32win_flex_bisonwin_bison.exe -d -v -b y $(InputPath)
- File Extensions = *.y
- Outputs = y.tab.c,y.tab.h
The important entries for Flex are:
- Name = Flex
- Command Line = C:GnuWin32binflex.exe $(InputPath)
- Command Line = C:GnuWin32win_flex_bisonwin_flex.exe --wincompat $(InputPath)
- File Extensions = *.l;*.flex
- Outputs = lex.yy.c
Note the --wincompat option for win_flex.
Save all your changes. You should have Custom Build Rule Files that look like this for 'Flex and Bison Tools':

More changes to the Configuration Properties

Cricket 2007 download for windows 10. You need to make these changes for every project.

Make sure the General Configuration Properties have Character Set = Not Set.We want to use the ANSI/ASCII character set, not Unicode.
Go to the C++ Preprocessor screen (Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Preprocessor)and add the Preprocessor Definitions_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE and_CRT_NONSTDC_NO_DEPRECATE.
These avoid more annoying but irrelevant warning messages from MSVC. Incidentally, you can do most of this setup as default: seeMSVC++: Getting rid of that _CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE warning.
Go to the C++ Advanced Properties screen (Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Advanced) and set Compile As = Compile as C Code (/TC) and Disable Specific Warnings = 4102.
The 4102 warning we disable is caused by the automatically-generated code [The label is defined but never referenced].This is generally one of those warnings you can safely disable without fear of hiding any real errors you might make in your code.
Update December 2013: The 4102 warning does not seem to happen with the new win_flex and win_bison.Instead we get [warning C4715: 'lookup' : not all control paths return a value].If you wish, you can change the 4102 above to 4715 to suppress this message, but be aware that

Install Bison Flex Cygwin