Once a pattern has been identified the caller of the lexical analyzer needs to be notified about what the token was and may be what the lexeme was that precisely matched. This type of action is the simplest kind of reaction to a pattern match. The next section will focus on tokens can be easily send to the caller of the lexical analyzer. More sophisticated actions may trigger the transition to other modes. The shortcut definition for mode transition triggering is explained in a dedicated section. Finally, actions may require more code to be programmed. For this reason, it is discussed how C/C++ code can be setup to perform actions.
Note, that actions not only occur as a companion of patterns. They may as well be applied for events. Then they take the role of an event handler. The syntax, though, for pattern-actions and actions for event handling is the same.
