I wanted to compile some Software (doesn't really matter what it was). Then, the make reported: yacc: command not found. I figured that this is some sort of a language and i figured that I had to download Bison. But now what all are all these programs? If the make reports, that it is looking for yacc, why shouldn't I install it rather than Bison?
Some sites told me, if I am using Linux, I have yacc. But on my machine (Mandrake 8.1), i don't seem to have it.
Thank you for helping

Well it used to be lex and yacc but they kinda got outdated so now they have been replaced be flex and bison. Some programs still look for the older versions though. The easiest ways around it is to create two scripts which call the newer programs.

Create yacc by typing the following as root in a terminal:

cat > /usr/bin/yacc << "EOF"
#!/bin/sh
# Begin /usr/bin/yacc

exec /usr/bin/bison -y "$@"

# End /usr/bin/yacc
EOF
chmod 755 /usr/bin/yacc


Do the same for lex:

cat > /usr/bin/lex << "EOF"
#!/bin/sh
# Begin /usr/bin/lex

exec /usr/bin/flex -l "$@"

# End /usr/bin/lex
EOF
chmod 755 /usr/bin/lex

There is a version of both lex and yacc for Linux. Most GNU based software use flex and Bison. Be careful trying to use one for the other because the program options are not the same. In SuSE, these programs are in the development section.

I thought passing the -y to bison solved all the problems of things not being the same. It says in the helpfiles that a shell script with bison -y $* can substitute yacc. Would there be any other reasons why that would not be enough. I have those scripts on several machines and never had any problems. But maybe that's because most of them all use bison instead of yacc anyways.

The -y does work for the switches. Senior moment; forgot that guy.

Great, this script worked.
Just one point... The lines with the # at the beginning are comments? If so, they wouldn't be required.

Yes the # symbol is for comments.
They are not required if you want all you'd have to put in the script is the exec line.