A compiler consists of a sequence of phases going from lexical analysis to code generation. Ideally, the formal verification of a compiler should include the formal verification of every component of the tool-chain. In order to contribute to the end-to-end verification of compilers, we implemented a verified lexer generator with usage similar to OCamllex. This software – Coqlex – reads a lexer specification and generates a lexer equipped with Coq proofs of its correctness.

Although the performance of the generated lexers does not measure up to the performance of a standard lexer generator such as OCamllex, the safety guarantees it comes with make it an interesting alternative to use when implementing totally verified compilers or other language processing tools.