Need help to compile my flex project

[adele25p]

Body

Hello, I need some help please !

I'm trying to compile a school project in flex on my Mac but I can't find what's causing the error I get.

Here what I got :

• I installed Flex with homebrew brew install flex and add some lines to my .zshrc file

export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/flex/bin:$PATH"
export LDFLAGS="-L/opt/homebrew/opt/flex/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/homebrew/opt/flex/include"

• my makefile

NOM=Exo.1.1

all : $(NOM).exe

$(NOM).exe : lex.yy.c
	cc lex.yy.c -lfl -o $(NOM).exe

lex.yy.c : $(NOM).lex
	flex $(NOM).lex

clean :
	rm -f lex.yy.c $(NOM).exe

• my flex file (Exo.1.1.flex)

DOSSIER       Dossier
CODE_DOSSIER  [0-9]{8}
PRENOM_NOM    [A-Z]+(\-[A-Z]+)*\/[A-Z]+(\-[A-Z]+)*
CODE_CONCERT  T[0-9]{2,6}
NOM_CONCERT   ([A-Z]|[0-9])+(\-([A-Z]|[0-9])+)*
DATE          [0-9]{2}\/[0-9]{1,2}(\/[0-9]{2})*
HEURE         ([0-1][0-9]|2[0-3]):([0-5][0-9])
NB            [1-9][0-9]*
PLACES        places
%%
{DOSSIER}      printf("dossier ");
{CODE_DOSSIER} printf("codeDossier ");
{PRENOM_NOM}   printf("prenomNom ");
{CODE_CONCERT} printf("codeConcert ");
{NB}           printf("nb ");
{NOM_CONCERT}  printf("nomConcert ");
{DATE}         printf("date ");
{HEURE}        printf("heure ");
{PLACES}       printf("places ");
[\n]           printf("RC\n");
[ \t]
<<EOF>>        printf("FinFichier\n"); yyterminate();

• When I try ro compile I get the error :

> make
flex Exo.1.1.lex
cc lex.yy.c -lfl -o Exo.1.1.exe
ld: library 'fl' not found
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
make: *** [Exo.1.1.exe] Error 1

Could you please help me find the problem ?

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[LukasBel]

Here's how to fix it:

First issue: The filename of your Flex file is Exo.1.1.lex but your makefile references Exo.1.1.flex. Make sure these match.
Main issue: Replace -lfl with -ll in the makefile. On macOS, the Flex library is named libl rather than libfl.

Here's the corrected makefile line:
$(NOM).exe : lex.yy.c
cc lex.yy.c -ll -o $(NOM).exe

If that still doesn't work, you can try using the full path to the library:

$(NOM).exe : lex.yy.c
cc lex.yy.c -L/opt/homebrew/opt/flex/lib -ll -o $(NOM).exe

Another alternative is to add the homebrew lib directory to the dynamic library path in your .zshrc:

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/flex/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH"
After making these changes, you should run make clean first, then make again to test.

[adele25p]

Thanks for your help.

The first issue you mention is a typing error, my file name is actually Exo.1.1.lex so my make file is actually accurate.

About the main issue, I did not know that the library name was different on mac thanks for mentioning this.

Now it's working.

[adele25p]

I actually find out that on Mac if you already have the "Command line tools", you don't need to install flex with Homebrew because it's already provided.

With the command :

ls /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/

You can get a list of all the tools provided.