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This chapter provides background information on lexical structures, introduces basic concepts and sheds some light on the process of lexical analysis and how it is implemented. The following questions will be dealt with:

• Lexical Analysis: what are lexical structures what is the approach to interpret them?

• Sequential Data Streams: what is a ‘lexatom’ and what are the surrounding concepts and terms?

• The Process: how does lexical analysis process data and what is a ‘token’?

• Work Stages: how can one build a lexical analyzer?

The chapter starts with general reflections on lexical structures with few relevance for practical applications. The practical relevance of topics treated in the sections of this chapter increase gradually. The last section, finally, puts the reader in a position to understand the basic structure of a lexical analyzer description file.