During the compilation process of a PL/I program, what does the term "Lexical analysis" refer to?

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Generating an optional matrix for further processingIdentifying fundamental syntactic patterns by applying reductionsDetecting basic language tokens and converting them into standardized symbolsEmploying a macro processor to optimize the assembly code output

Explanation

Lexical analysis involves scanning the source code to identify the smallest meaningful elements, called tokens, and representing them as uniform symbols for further stages of compilation. It does not involve syntax reductions, matrix creation, or macro processing.