Parse nested files using LEX/YACC

Question

I have a question regarding how to parse nested files with the same structure using LEX/YACC.

Let's say that I have a file with the following structure

  File_1
      ....
      include File_2
      include File_3
      ....

One possible approach is to call the function yyparse() within the YACC file each time I read a line such as

 include File_n

but I understand this approach is not the good one, according to my lack of experience and poor knowledge in LEX/YACC there would be executing one LEX instance against two YACC parsing functions which may results in weird problems, isn't it?.

So, I was wondering which others options do I have?

Thanks!

Answer 1

After some research days, I figured out how to manage my problem.

Since my question did not receive much attention I guess my question was not formulated in an understandable way. Anyway, I am going to post the solution I found. I solved the problem in the lex file by following this tutorial.

Basically, I had to define a stack in order to save the current buffer state for the file that is currently being parsed when the include statement is found, then I started to parse the included file, when the included file is finished I switched back to the first file.

I hope this answer may help someone around.