The comment above the code patch in the new patch file says:
"This is a Hail Mary situation. It seems to work."
It doesn't reliably on NetBSD-5 or -current; namely, it makes flex
spit out a "Broken pipe" when presented with an input file on stdin.

Finding the problem area and suggesting a workaround kudos mlelstv.
There are better ways to fix it properly, which will be employed
in Due Time.

(spz)