5.4 Comments in the Input

Flex supports C-style comments, that is, anything between ‘/*’ and ‘*/’ is considered a comment. Whenever flex encounters a comment, it copies the entire comment verbatim to the generated source code. Comments may appear just about anywhere, but with the following exceptions:

• Comments may not appear in the Rules Section wherever flex is expecting a regular expression. This means comments may not appear at the beginning of a line, or immediately following a list of scanner states.
• Comments may not appear on an ‘%option’ line in the Definitions Section.

If you want to follow a simple rule, then always begin a comment on a new line, with one or more whitespace characters before the initial ‘/*’). This rule will work anywhere in the input file.

All the comments in the following example are valid:

%{
/* code block */
%}

/* Definitions Section */
%x STATE_X

%%
    /* Rules Section */
ruleA   /* after regex */ { /* code block */ } /* after code block */
        /* Rules Section (indented) */
<STATE_X>{
ruleC   ECHO;
ruleD   ECHO;
%{
/* code block */
%}
}
%%
/* User Code Section */