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1GNU Bison NEWS
2
3* Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5** Future changes
6
7 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
8 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
9
10*** K&C parsers
11
12 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
13 generated for C supprt ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
14 compilers.
15
16*** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
17
18 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
19 YYLTYPE.
20
21 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
22 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
23
24 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
25 %error-verbose.
26
27*** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
28
29 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
30 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
31 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
32 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
33 it.
34
35** Headers
36
37*** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
38
39 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
40 parsers (lalr1.cc). For intance, with --defines=foo.h:
41
42 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
43 # define YY_FOO_H
44 ...
45 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
46
47*** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
48
49 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
50 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
51
52 int bar_parse (void);
53
54 rather than
55
56 #define yyparse bar_parse
57 int yyparse (void);
58
59 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
60 single compilation unit.
61
62*** Exported symbols in C++
63
64 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
65 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
66 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
67
68* Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
69
70** Future changes:
71
72 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
73
74** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
75
76** glr.c improvements:
77
78*** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
79
80 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
81 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
82
83*** __attribute__ is preserved:
84
85 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
86 when -std is passed to GCC).
87
88** lalr1.java: several fixes:
89
90 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
91 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
92
93** Changes for C++:
94
95*** C++11 compatibility:
96
97 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
98 or higher.
99
100*** Header guards
101
102 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
103 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
104
105 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
106 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
107 ...
108 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
109
110 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
111 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
112 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
113
114 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
115
116 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
117 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
118 ...
119 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
120
121*** C++ locations:
122
123 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
124 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
125 documentation were fixed.
126
127** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
128
129** Changes in the manual:
130
131*** %printer is documented
132
133 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
134 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
135
136 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
137 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
138
139*** Several improvements have been made:
140
141 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
142 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
143 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
144 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
145
146** Building bison:
147
148*** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
149
150 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
151 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
152
153*** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
154
155*** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
156
157 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
158 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
159
160*** The install-pdf target works properly:
161
162 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
163 halts in the middle of its course.
164
165* Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
166
167** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
168
169 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
170 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
171 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
172 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
173 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
174
175** Named references:
176
177 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
178 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
179 actions code.
180
181 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
182 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
183 as named references:
184
185 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
186 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
187
188 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
189
190 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
191 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
192
193 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
194 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
195 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
196
197 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
198 will help to stabilize them.
199
200** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
201
202 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
203 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
204 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
205 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
206 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
207 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
208 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
209 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
210 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
211
212 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
213 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
214 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
215 file with these directives:
216
217 %define lr.type lalr
218 %define lr.type ielr
219 %define lr.type canonical-lr
220
221 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
222 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
223 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
224 manual.
225
226 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
227 stabilize them.
228
229** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
230
231 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
232 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
233 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
234 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
235 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
236 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
237 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
238 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
239 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
240 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
241 tokens.
242
243 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
244 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
245 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
246 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
247 inconsistent states.
248
249 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
250 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
251 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
252 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
253 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
254 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
255 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
256 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
257 power.
258
259 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
260 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
261
262 %define parse.lac full
263
264 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
265 details including a few caveats.
266
267 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
268 stabilize it.
269
270** %define improvements:
271
272*** Can now be invoked via the command line:
273
274 Each of these command-line options
275
276 -D NAME[=VALUE]
277 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
278
279 -F NAME[=VALUE]
280 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
281
282 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
283
284 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
285
286 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
287 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
288 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
289 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
290
291*** Variables renamed:
292
293 The following %define variables
294
295 api.push_pull
296 lr.keep_unreachable_states
297
298 have been renamed to
299
300 api.push-pull
301 lr.keep-unreachable-states
302
303 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
304 for backward compatibility.
305
306*** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
307
308 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
309 within quotations marks. For example,
310
311 %define api.push-pull "push"
312
313 can be rewritten as
314
315 %define api.push-pull push
316
317*** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
318
319*** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
320
321** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
322
323** Character literals not of length one:
324
325 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
326 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
327 the following grammar to be the same token:
328
329 exp: exp '++'
330 | exp '+' exp
331 ;
332
333 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
334 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
335
336** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
337
338 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
339 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
340 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
341 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
342
343** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
344
345 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
346 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
347 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
348 and "last" members, instead of
349
350 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
351 do \
352 if (N) \
353 { \
354 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
355 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
356 } \
357 else \
358 { \
359 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
360 } \
361 while (false)
362
363 use:
364
365 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
366 do \
367 if (N) \
368 { \
369 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
370 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
371 } \
372 else \
373 { \
374 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
375 } \
376 while (false)
377
378** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
379
380 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
381 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
382 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
383 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
384
385** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
386
387 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
388 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
389 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
390 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
391 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
392 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
393 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
394 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
395
396** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
397
398 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
399 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
400 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
401 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
402
403 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
404
405 instead of
406
407 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
408
409 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
410 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
411 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
412 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
413 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
414 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
415 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
416
417** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
418
419 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
420 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
421 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
422 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
423 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
424
425*** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
426 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
427 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
428 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
429 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
430 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
431 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
432 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
433 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
434 shifted or discarded.
435
436*** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
437 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
438 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
439 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
440
441*** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
442 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
443 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
444 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
445 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
446 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
447 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
448 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
449 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
450 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
451 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
452 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
453 by default.
454
455** Java skeleton fixes:
456
457*** A location handling bug has been fixed.
458
459*** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
460 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
461
462*** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
463
464** -W/--warnings fixes:
465
466*** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
467
468 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
469 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
470
471 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
472
473*** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
474
475 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
476 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
477 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
478 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
479 example:
480
481 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
482 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
483 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
484 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
485
486 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
487 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
488 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
489 then have no effect on the conflict report.
490
491*** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
492
493 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
494 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
495
496 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
497
498*** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
499
500 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
501 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
502 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
503 suppress all warnings:
504
505 bison -Wnone gram.y
506
507** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
508
509 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
510 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
511 produced an assertion failure. For example:
512
513 %left END 0
514
515 This bug has been fixed.
516
517* Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
518
519** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
520 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
521
522** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
523 been fixed.
524
525** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
526
527** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
528 been fixed.
529
530** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
531 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
532 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
533 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
534
535** Minor documentation fixes.
536
537* Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
538
539** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
540 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
541 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
542 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
543 affected platforms.
544
545** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
546
547 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
548 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
549 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
550 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
551 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
552 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
553 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
554 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
555 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
556
557** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
558
559** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
560 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
561 avoided.
562
563** %code is now a permanent feature.
564
565 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
566
567 %{CODE%}
568
569 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
570 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
571
572 %code {CODE}
573 %code requires {CODE}
574 %code provides {CODE}
575 %code top {CODE}
576
577 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
578 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
579 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
580 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
581 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
582
583 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
584 is still considered experimental.
585
586** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
587
588 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
589 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
590 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
591 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
592 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
593 specified by POSIX.
594
595 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
596 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
597 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
598 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
599 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
600 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
601 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
602
603 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
604
605 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
606 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
607 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
608 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
609 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
610 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
611 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
612 be removed altogether.
613
614 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
615 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
616 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
617 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
618 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
619 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
620 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
621 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
622 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
623 2.4.2 is not necessary.
624
625** Internationalization.
626
627 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
628 message translations were not installed although supported by the
629 host system.
630
631* Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
632
633** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
634 declarations have been fixed.
635
636** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
637
638 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
639 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
640
641 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
642
643 instead of
644
645 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
646
647 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
648 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
649 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
650 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
651 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
652 feature.
653
654** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
655
656* Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
657
658** %language is an experimental feature.
659
660 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
661 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
662 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
663 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
664 in future releases.
665
666** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
667
668** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
669 fixed.
670
671* Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
672
673** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
674 are now deprecated:
675
676 %define NAME "VALUE"
677
678** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
679
680 %define api.pure
681
682 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
683 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
684
685** Push Parsing
686
687 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
688 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
689 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
690 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
691 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
692
693 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
694 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
695
696 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
697
698 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
699 feedback will help to stabilize it.
700
701** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
702 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
703 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
704
705** Java
706
707 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
708 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
709 %skeleton to select it.
710
711 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
712
713 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
714 feedback will help to stabilize it.
715
716** %language
717
718 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
719 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
720 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
721 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
722
723** XML Automaton Report
724
725 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
726 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
727 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
728
729** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
730 %defines. For example:
731
732 %defines "parser.h"
733
734** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
735 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
736 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
737 instead of "unused".
738
739** Unreachable State Removal
740
741 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
742 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
743 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
744
745 1. Removes unreachable states.
746
747 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
748 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
749 directives in existing grammar files.
750
751 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
752 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
753
754 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
755
756 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
757
758 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
759 for further discussion.
760
761** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
762
763 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
764 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
765 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
766 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
767 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
768 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
769 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
770 code.
771
772** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
773 name.
774
775** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
776 deprecated:
777
778 %file-prefix "parser"
779 %name-prefix "c_"
780 %output "parser.c"
781
782** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
783
784 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
785 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
786 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
787 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
788 it:
789
790 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
791 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
792 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
793 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
794
795 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
796 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
797 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
798 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
799
800 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
801 determine whether they should become permanent features.
802
803** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
804
805 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
806 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
807 about unused $2 in:
808
809 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
810
811 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
812 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
813
814 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
815
816 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
817 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
818 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
819
820 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
821 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
822
823** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
824
825 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
826 %printer's:
827
828 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
829 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
830 declared semantic type tags.
831
832 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
833 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
834 type tags.
835
836 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
837 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
838 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
839 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
840
841 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
842 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
843 features.
844
845 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
846 details.
847
848** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
849 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
850 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
851
852** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
853 completely removed from Bison.
854
855* Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
856
857** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
858 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
859 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
860 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
861 and is required by POSIX.
862
863** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
864 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
865
866** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
867
868 For example:
869
870 %union { char *string; }
871 %token <string> STRING1
872 %token <string> STRING2
873 %type <string> string1
874 %type <string> string2
875 %union { char character; }
876 %token <character> CHR
877 %type <character> chr
878 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
879 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
880 %destructor { } <character>
881
882 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
883 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
884 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
885 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
886 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
887
888 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
889 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
890 future versions.]
891
892** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
893 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
894 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
895 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
896 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
897
898** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
899 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
900
901 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
902 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
903 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
904 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
905 declared after the first %union.
906
907 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
908 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
909 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
910 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
911 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
912 after the token definitions.
913
914 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
915 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
916
917** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
918 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
919 %after-header.
920
921 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
922 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
923 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
924 convenient for you:
925
926 %before-header {
927 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
928 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
929 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
930 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
931 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
932 }
933 %start-header {
934 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
935 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
936 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
937 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
938 }
939 %union {
940 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
941 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
942 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
943 }
944 %end-header {
945 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
946 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
947 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
948 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
949 * definitions. */
950 }
951 %after-header {
952 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
953 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
954 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
955 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
956 * Bison-generated definitions. */
957 }
958
959 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
960 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
961
962 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
963 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
964
965** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
966 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
967 in a future release.
968
969* Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
970
971** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
972 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
973
974** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
975 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
976
977* Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
978
979** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
980 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
981 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
982
983** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
984
985** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
986
987** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
988 their contents together.
989
990** New warning: unused values
991 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
992 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
993
994 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
995 | exp "+" exp
996 ;
997
998 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
999 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1000 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1001
1002 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1003 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1004 | exp "+" exp
1005 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1006 ;
1007
1008 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1009 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1010 values are used, e.g.:
1011
1012 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1013 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1014 ;
1015
1016 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1017 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1018
1019 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1020
1021 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1022 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1023
1024** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1025 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1026 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1027 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1028
1029** %expect, %expect-rr
1030 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1031 instead of warnings.
1032
1033** GLR, YACC parsers.
1034 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1035 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1036
1037** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1038
1039** %require "VERSION"
1040 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1041 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1042
1043** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1044 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1045 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1046 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1047 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1048
1049 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1050 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1051 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1052 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1053
1054 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1055 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1056
1057** DJGPP support added.
1058\f
1059* Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1060
1061** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1062
1063** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1064 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1065 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1066 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1067 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1068 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1069
1070** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1071 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1072 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1073 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1074
1075** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1076 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1077 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1078
1079** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1080 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1081 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1082 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1083 unexpected "number"'.
1084\f
1085* Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1086
1087** Possibly-incompatible changes
1088
1089 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1090 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1091 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1092 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1093 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1094
1095 - Error token location.
1096 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1097 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1098 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1099 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1100
1101 - Semicolon changes:
1102 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1103 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1104
1105 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1106 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1107 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1108 forget a closing quote.
1109
1110 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1111
1112** New features
1113
1114 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1115
1116 - New directive: %initial-action.
1117 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1118 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1119
1120 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1121 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1122
1123 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1124 This is a GNU extension.
1125
1126 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1127 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1128
1129 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1130
1131 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1132 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1133
1134** Bug fixes
1135
1136 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1137 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1138 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1139 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1140 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1141 these violations will become errors again.
1142
1143 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1144 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1145
1146 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1147\f
1148* Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1149
1150** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1151 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1152
1153** syntax error processing
1154
1155 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1156 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1157
1158 - %destructor
1159 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1160 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1161
1162 - %error-verbose
1163 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1164
1165 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1166 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1167
1168** POSIX conformance
1169
1170 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1171 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1172 compatibility with Yacc.
1173
1174 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1175 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1176 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1177 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1178 be consistent.
1179
1180 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1181 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1182
1183 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1184 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1185
1186 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1187 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1188
1189 - Yacc command and library now available
1190 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1191 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1192 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1193 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1194
1195 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1196
1197 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1198 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1199 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1200
1201** Other compatibility issues
1202
1203 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1204 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1205 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1206 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1207 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1208 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1209
1210 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1211 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1212
1213 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1214 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1215
1216 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1217 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1218 withdrawn in a future release.
1219
1220** GLR parser notes
1221
1222 - GLR and inline
1223 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1224 C keyword "inline".
1225
1226 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1227 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1228
1229** %parse-param and %lex-param
1230 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1231 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1232 shortcomings:
1233
1234 - a single argument only can be added,
1235 - their types are weak (void *),
1236 - this context is not passed to anciliary functions such as yyerror,
1237 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1238
1239 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1240 For instance:
1241
1242 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1243 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1244 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1245
1246 results in the following signatures:
1247
1248 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1249 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1250
1251 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1252
1253 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1254 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1255
1256** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1257 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1258 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1259
1260** #line in output files
1261 - --no-line works properly.
1262
1263** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1264 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1265 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1266 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1267\f
1268* Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1269
1270** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1271
1272** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1273
1274** GLR parsers
1275 Fix spurious parse errors.
1276
1277** Pure parsers
1278 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1279 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1280
1281** Type Clashes
1282 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1283 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1284
1285 untyped: ... typed;
1286
1287 but the converse remains an error:
1288
1289 typed: ... untyped;
1290
1291** Values of mid-rule actions
1292 The following code:
1293
1294 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1295
1296 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1297 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1298\f
1299* Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1300
1301** GLR parsing
1302 The declaration
1303 %glr-parser
1304 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1305 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1306 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1307 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1308
1309 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1310 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1311
1312** Output Directory
1313 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1314 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1315 now creates "bar.c".
1316
1317** Undefined token
1318 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1319 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1320
1321** Unknown token numbers
1322 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1323 no longer the case.
1324
1325** Error token
1326 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1327 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1328 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1329 will be mapped onto another number.
1330
1331** Verbose error messages
1332 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1333 error recovery is possible.
1334
1335** End token
1336 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1337
1338** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1339 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1340 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1341 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1342 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1343 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1344 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1345 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1346 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1347
1348** Traces
1349 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1350
1351** Larger grammars
1352 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1353 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1354 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1355 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1356
1357** Explicit initial rule
1358 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1359 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1360 graphs as rule 0.
1361
1362** Useless rules
1363 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1364 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1365
1366** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1367 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1368
1369** Rules never reduced
1370 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1371 reported.
1372
1373** Incorrect "Token not used"
1374 On a grammar such as
1375
1376 %token useless useful
1377 %%
1378 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1379
1380 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1381 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1382
1383** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1384 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1385
1386** Default locations
1387 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1388 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1389 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1390 the computation of @$.
1391
1392** Token end-of-file
1393 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1394 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1395 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1396 For instance
1397 %token MYEOF 0
1398 or
1399 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1400
1401** Semantic parser
1402 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1403
1404** New translations
1405 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1406 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1407
1408** Incorrect token definitions
1409 When given
1410 %token 'a' "A"
1411 bison used to output
1412 #define 'a' 65
1413
1414** Token definitions as enums
1415 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1416 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1417 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1418
1419** Reports
1420 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1421 produces additional information:
1422 - itemset
1423 complete the core item sets with their closure
1424 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1425 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1426 - solved
1427 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1428 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1429 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1430
1431** Type clashes
1432 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1433 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1434
1435 %type <foo> bar
1436 %%
1437 bar: '0' {} '0';
1438
1439 This is fixed.
1440
1441** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1442\f
1443* Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1444
1445** C Skeleton
1446 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1447 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1448 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1449
1450 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1451 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1452 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1453 kludge will be disabled.
1454
1455 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1456 extended.
1457\f
1458* Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1459
1460** File name clashes are detected
1461 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1462 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1463
1464** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1465 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1466 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1467 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1468 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1469 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1470
1471** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1472 many portability hassles.
1473
1474** DJGPP support added.
1475
1476** Fix test suite portability problems.
1477\f
1478* Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1479
1480** Fix C++ issues
1481 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1482 under some conditions.
1483
1484** Catch invalid @n
1485 As is done with $n.
1486\f
1487* Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1488
1489** Fix Yacc output file names
1490
1491** Portability fixes
1492
1493** Italian, Dutch translations
1494\f
1495* Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1496
1497** Many Bug Fixes
1498
1499** GNU Gettext and %expect
1500 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1501 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1502 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1503 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
1504
1505** Use of alloca in parsers
1506 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1507 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1508
1509 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1510 problems as on AIX.
1511
1512** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1513
1514** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1515 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1516
1517** User Actions
1518 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1519 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1520 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1521
1522** Better C++ compliance
1523 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1524 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1525
1526** Reduced Grammars
1527 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1528
1529** 64 bit hosts
1530 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1531
1532** Error messages
1533 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1534
1535** %expect
1536 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1537 any warning.
1538
1539** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1540
1541** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1542
1543** Swedish translation
1544
1545** Parse errors
1546 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1547 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1548 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1549
1550** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1551 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1552 previous allocations were not freed.
1553
1554** Fixed verbose output file.
1555 Some newlines were missing.
1556 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1557
1558** Fixed conflict report.
1559 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1560
1561** %expect
1562 Was not used.
1563 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1564
1565** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1566
1567** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1568
1569** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1570
1571** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1572 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1573
1574** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1575
1576** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1577 New.
1578
1579** --output
1580 New, aliasing "--output-file".
1581\f
1582* Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1583
1584** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
1585 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
1586 argument.
1587
1588** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
1589 experiment.
1590
1591** Portability fixes.
1592\f
1593* Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1594
1595** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1596 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1597 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1598 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1599
1600** Added "-g" and "--graph".
1601
1602** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1603
1604** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
1605
1606** Russian translation added.
1607
1608** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
1609
1610** Added the old Bison reference card.
1611
1612** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
1613
1614** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
1615
1616** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
1617
1618** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
1619 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
1620
1621** New directives.
1622 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
1623 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
1624
1625** @$
1626 Automatic location tracking.
1627\f
1628* Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
1629
1630** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
1631
1632** Added NLS.
1633
1634** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
1635
1636** There is now a FAQ.
1637\f
1638* Changes in version 1.27:
1639
1640** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
1641 some systems has been fixed.
1642\f
1643* Changes in version 1.26:
1644
1645** Bison now uses Automake.
1646
1647** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
1648
1649** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
1650
1651** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
1652
1653** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
1654
1655** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
1656
1657** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
1658 not provide alloca().
1659\f
1660* Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
1661
1662** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
1663the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
1664
1665** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
1666example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
1667of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
1668
1669** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
1670and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
1671table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
1672purposes.
1673
1674** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
1675directives in the parser file.
1676
1677** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
1678Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
1679
1680** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
1681the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
1682The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
1683a switch statement body.
1684\f
1685* Changes in version 1.23:
1686
1687The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
1688passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
1689actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
1690by casting it to the proper pointer type.
1691
1692Line numbers in output file corrected.
1693\f
1694* Changes in version 1.22:
1695
1696--help option added.
1697\f
1698* Changes in version 1.20:
1699
1700Output file does not redefine const for C++.
1701
1702-----
1703
1704Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1705
1706This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
1707
1708This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1709it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1710the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1711(at your option) any later version.
1712
1713This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1714but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1715MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1716GNU General Public License for more details.
1717
1718You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1719along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1720
1721 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
1722 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
1723 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
1724 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
1725 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
1726 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
1727 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
1728 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
1729 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
1730 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
1731 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
1732 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
1733 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
1734 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG
1735 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
1736 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ
1737
1738Local Variables:
1739mode: outline
1740fill-column: 76
1741End: