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NAME

       alex - the lexical analyser generator for Haskell

SYNOPSIS

       alex [OPTION]... file [OPTION]...

DESCRIPTION

       This manual page documents briefly the alex command.

       This  manual  page  was  written  for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution
       because the original program does not have a manual page.  Instead,  it
       has  documentation  in  various  other formats, including DVI, Info and
       HTML; see below.

       Alex is a lexical analyser generator system for Haskell. It is  similar
       to the tool lex or flex for C/C++.

       Input files are expected to be of the form file.x and alex will produce
       output in file.y

       Caveat:  When  using  hbc  (Chalmers  Haskell)  the  command   argument
       structure  is  slightly  different.   This  is because the hbc run time
       system takes some flags as its own (for setting things  like  the  heap
       size,  etc).   This problem can be circumvented by adding a single dash
       (‘-’) to your command line.  So when using a hbc generated  version  of
       Alex, the argument structure is:

       alex - [OPTION]... file [OPTION]...

OPTIONS

       The  programs  follow  the  usual  GNU  command  line syntax, with long
       options starting with two dashes  (‘--’).   A  summary  of  options  is
       included   below.    For   a   complete   description,  see  the  other
       documentation.

       -d, --debug
              Instructs Alex to generate a lexer which will  output  debugging
              messsages as it runs.

       -g, --ghc
              Instructs  Alex  to  generate  a  lexer  which  is optimised for
              compiling  with  GHC.  The  lexer  will  be  significantly  more
              efficient,  both  in terms of the size of the compiled lexer and
              its runtime.

       -o FILE, --outfile=FILE
              Specifies the filename in which the output is to be  placed.  By
              default,  this  is the name of the input file with the .x suffix
              replaced by .hs

       -i [FILE], --info[=FILE]
              Produces a human-readable rendition of the state  machine  (DFA)
              that  Alex  derives  from the lexer, in FILE (default: file.info
              where the input file is file.x ).

              The format of the info file is currently a bit  basic,  and  not
              particularly informative.

       -v, --version
              Print   version   information   on  standard  output  then  exit
              successfully.

FILES

       @DATADIR@

SEE ALSO

       /usr/share/doc/alex, the Alex homepage (http://haskell.org/alex/)

COPYRIGHT

       Alex Version 2.3.3

       Copyright (c) 1995-2003, Chris Dornan and Simon Marlow

AUTHOR

       This manual page was written by Ian Lynagh <igloo@debian.org>, based on
       the  happy manpage, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by
       others).