Extract text from Y files
To convert your Y file to another format, you need GNU Bison or other Developer software.
To convert other file formats to the "Source Code" file type, you need software like GNU Bison or a similar tool.
A .y file is most commonly a Yacc Source file (or Bison grammar file) used by developers to define the grammatical structure of a programming language or data stream. While these files are technically plain text, they are useless on their own; they act as blueprints that must be processed by a parser generator like GNU Bison or the original Yacc (Yet Another Compiler-Compiler). The friction for most users arises because you cannot simply "run" a .y file - it must first be converted (compiled) into C or C++ source code (typically generating .tab.c and .tab.h files) before it can be integrated into an executable application.
Less frequently, a .y file may be a proprietary 3D asset used by AXYZ design in their anima® software, or a model file from the game Elsword. These binary formats are completely incompatible with text editors and often require specific, paid software environments to view. If you are dealing with the developer format, the best workflow is to convert the .y file to C or CPP for compilation, or TXT for documentation and reviewing logic without specialized tools. For 3D variants, users generally look to convert to standard interchange formats like FBX or OBJ to use the assets in Blender or Autodesk 3ds Max, though this often requires the original proprietary software to perform the export.
Convert.Guru analyzes your Y file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted L, LEX, BIN, DELTA and X files.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our Y converter.