# Practical parsing with Flex and Bison

DevFeed: [Practical parsing with Flex and Bison](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/practical-parsing-with-flex-and-bison-21491.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://begriffs.com/posts/2021-11-28-practical-parsing.html>)

Published: 2021-11-28T00:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Joe Nelson](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/joe-nelson.md>)

Topics: [Parsing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/parsing.md>), [Parser](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/parser.md>), [C](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/c.md>), [Regular expression](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/regular-expression.md>), [make](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/make.md>)

Tags: [build-system](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/build-system.md>), [c](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/c.md>), [compiler](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/compiler.md>), [lexer](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/lexer.md>), [make](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/make.md>), [parsing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/parsing.md>), [scanner](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scanner.md>)

## AI overview

A practical guide to parsing with Lex, Yacc, Flex, and Bison. It explains how lexing divides input into meaningful chunks, how parsing groups those chunks according to recursive rules, and how parser generators can be integrated into build systems and used for real data formats.

## Source excerpt

2021-11-28 Although parsing is often described from the perspective of writing a compiler, there are many common smaller tasks where it's useful. Reading file formats, talking over the network, creating shells, and analyzing source code are all easier using a robust parser. By taking time to learn general-purpose parsing tools, you can go beyond fragile homemade solutions, and inflexible third-party libraries. We'll cover Lex and Yacc in this guide because they are mature and portable.