Re: error: invalid character `' (ASCII 0) near line 164, column 2 (problem avoided)

[Ben Abbott]

On Dec 31, 2009, at 8:37 AM, Ben Abbott wrote:

> On Dec 27, 2009, at 7:35 PM, Ben Abbott wrote:
> 
>> On Dec 27, 2009, at 6:12 PM, John W. Eaton wrote:
>> 
>>> On 26-Dec-2009, Ben Abbott wrote:
>>> 
>>> | On Dec 26, 2009, at 12:37 PM, Ben Abbott wrote:
>>> | 
>>> | > On Dec 25, 2009, at 4:24 PM, Ben Abbott wrote:
>>> | > 
>>> | >> Is anyone else seeing this?
>>> | >> 
>>> | >> ../../run-octave -f -q -H -p . --eval "geometryimages ('voronoi', 
>>> 'txt');"
>>> | >> warning: invalid character `' (ASCII 0) near line 92, column 2
>>> | >> error: invalid character `' (ASCII 0) near line 164, column 2
>>> | >> parse error near line 164 of file 
>>> /Users/bpabbott/Development/mercurial/local_clone/scripts/set/unique.m
>>> 
>>> The only way I can see this happening is if text_yyinput returns 0,
>>> which can only happen if yyinput returns 0, which should only be
>>> possible if flex's internal buffer somehow has an ASCII nul character
>>> in it.  I don't see how that can happen, and as I can't reproduce this
>>> problem, you will need to do some debugging to see what the contents
>>> of the flex buffer is and try to find out why it is incorrect.
>>> 
>>> jwe
>> 
>> At the moment I have no insight ... but I'll start studying the problem.
>> 
>> Ben
> 
> The problem appears to be with Mac OSX's variant of flex.
> 
>       $ /usr/bin/flex --version
>       flex 2.5.35
> 
> If I use an older version from Fink ...
> 
>       $ /sw/bin/flex --version
>       flex version 2.5.4
> 
> ... then the (ASCII 0) error/warnings are absent, but I need to edit lex.cc 
> to add "#include <config.h>".
> 
> I think the obvious next step is to independently build flex (version 2.5.35) 
> and try it. I'll look into creating a Fink package for that.
> 
> Ben

I noticed that Fink's package flex-devel buries flex-2.3.35 at 
/sw/lib/flex/bin/flex.

        $ /sw/lib/flex/bin/flex --version
        flex 2.5.35

To use this version, I modified my shell environment ...

        ## Use the flex from flex-devel
        export PREFIX=/sw
        export PATH="$PREFIX/lib/flex/bin:$PATH"
        export CPPFLAGS="-I$PREFIX/lib/flex/include $CPPFLAGS"
        export LDFLAGS="-L$PREFIX/lib/flex/lib"

... and then removed the existing lex.cc and reran configure and make.

This resulted in a lex.cc that works as expected; (1) the"%top{}" directive in 
lex.ll works, and (2) there are no instances of "(ASCII 0)" errors/warnings.

Thus, it appears that the flex that comes with Mac OSX has some *features*. If 
anyone has insight in how flex works and would like to look into what Apple 
changed ...

        http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/flex/flex-24.1/patches/

Ben