docs for lex/yacc

[Tim O'Reilly]

In article <126609 at uunet.UU.NET>, rbj at uunet.UU.NET (Root Boy Jim) writes:
> 
> NO! DON'T BUY THIS. NOT EVEN FROM US. IT'S A PIECE OF SHIT.
> 
> So says Vern Paxson (author of flex) in his ;login: book review. 
> 
> To be honest, I haven't looked at the book myself. But I
> have never read such a bad review in my entire life, and I am
> surprised that ORA would put out such trash.


If you haven't read the book yourself, please don't repeat what other
people say about it, or at least use their own words, rather than
magnifying them as you did.  The book does have its problems, which we
unfortunately didn't uncover until too late, but we've also had enough
positive feedback from people whom it has helped that we've decided to
leave it out there while it is undergoing substantial revision.
Most of the minor errors that Vern cited have already been fixed
in the current printing; the major flaws in the approach take
more time.  

I will point out that I have read such a bad review before!  A review 
in ;login trashed Managing UUCP a couple of months before UUNET started 
handing it out to new customers.  The book has gone on to help
many thousands of people, and is the one source that people tend
to point to for help with UUCP.  As far as I'm concerned, you can always
trust the technical competence, but not always the judgement of
what is useful to other people, of the reviewers who write for ;login.

-- 
Tim O'Reilly @ O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.  Publishers of Nutshell Handbooks
632 Petaluma Avenue, Sebastopol, CA 95472
707-829-8512, 800-338-6887 (in CA 800-533-6887), FAX 707-829-0104
Internet:  tim at ora.com     UUCP:  uunet!ora!tim