LEX behaviour when given "large" automata.

[Philippe Schnoebelen]

   I'm having some problems with LEX. When my number of keywords/regexps is
growing, the lexical analyzer  begins to  give strange,  unexpected, (let's
face  it, wrong) results. This  is very annoying because  I did not get any
warning message about my lexical specification being too large.  Now, maybe
LEX is okay and I'm just blaming  it for my weird  errors, but you know how
it is easy to find a suspect when you're no C wizard :-)

  Is there  anybody who knows something about  the behaviour of LEX in such
situations, and  who could   explain   how to interpret,  avoid, solve  the
problem ? (A first solution would be to get some warning message...)

   Much thanks in advance.
--
Philippe SCHNOEBELEN,				Best:        phs at lifia.imag.fr
LIFIA - INPG,
46, Avenue Felix VIALLET			2nd:		phs at lifia.UUCP
38000 Grenoble, FRANCE				last: ..!mcvax!inria!lifia!phs
[Lex has never been noted for its robustness, nor for the quality of its
implementation, having been basically a summer's student intern project.  It
could stand serious rewriting which, to the best of my knowlege, it has never
received.  -John]
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