Flex error on HPUX

[Jerome Salmon]

Hi,
I am having a problem running Flex. My operating system is HP-UX 11.23 ia64 and the version of flex I am using is 2.5.33 retrieved from the flex-2.5.33-ia64-11.23.depot archive.
The problem is that if I try and process even the simplest program, I get a message:
"flex: fatal internal error, exec failed"
I have downloaded and installed all the runtime dependencies (gettext and libiconv) and added /usr/local/bin to my path and /usr/local/lib/hpux32 to LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
Does anybody have any ideas or experience with this problem?
Thanks,
Jerome

[Steven Schweda · Accepted solution]

I know nothing, but a Google search for that
message found a suggestion to install GNU
"m4". (I'll avoid the temptation to complain
about the sub-helpful error message, but it
sure would be nice to know what it was trying
to "exec".)

[skt_skt]

i had similar (not same) problem with another software on 11.23/IA64

i set the SHLIB_PATH=usr/lib/X11R5.So i guess it may be some path problem ...

tned33n:root [/sbin/init.d] diff agent agent.0621
17c17,18
< export SHLIB_PATH=usr/lib/X11R5
---
> LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/Navisphere/lib"
> export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

[Jerome Salmon]

Thank you Steven,
This was exactly my problem. Once I loaded m4, all is working fine.
Jerome

[Steven Schweda]

I still don't know anything, but in flex's
"filter.c", there is this:

static const char * check_4_gnu_m4 =
"m4_dnl ifdef(`__gnu__', ,"
"`errprint(Flex requires GNU M4. Set the PATH or set the M4 environment variable to its path name.)"
" m4exit(2)')\n";

Perhaps it got confused by finding the
non-GNU "m4" which comes with HP-UX, and that
led to the lame message.

Everything's complicated.

Reading the "flex" documentation might reveal
something, too, but I'm too lazy for that.

[Dennis Handly]

>Steven: but it sure would be nice to know what it was trying to "exec".

If Jerome hadn't already found out, using tusc would answer that question.