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1GNU Bison NEWS
2
3* Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
6
7 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
8 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
9 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
10
11** Backward incompatible changes
12
13*** Obsolete features
14
15 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
16
17 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
18 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
19
20 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
21 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
22
23 Missing semicolons at the end of actions are no longer added (as announced
24 in the release 2.5).
25
26*** Use of YACC='bison -y'
27
28 TL;DR: With Autoconf <= 2.69, pass -Wno-yacc to (AM_)YFLAGS if you use
29 Bison extensions.
30
31 Traditional Yacc generates 'y.tab.c' whatever the name of the input file.
32 Therefore Makefiles written for Yacc expect 'y.tab.c' (and possibly
33 'y.tab.h' and 'y.outout') to be generated from 'foo.y'.
34
35 To this end, for ages, AC_PROG_YACC, Autoconf's macro to look for an
36 implementation of Yacc, was using Bison as 'bison -y'. While it does
37 ensure compatible output file names, it also enables warnings for
38 incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc. In other words, 'bison -y' triggers
39 warnings for Bison extensions.
40
41 Autoconf 2.70+ fixes this incompatibility by using YACC='bison -o y.tab.c'
42 (which also generates 'y.tab.h' and 'y.output' when needed).
43 Alternatively, disable Yacc warnings by passing '-Wno-yacc' to your Yacc
44 flags (YFLAGS, or AM_YFLAGS with Automake).
45
46** Bug fixes
47
48*** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
49
50 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
51 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
52 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
53 preprocessor expansion:
54
55 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
56
57 This is fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
58 identifiers for user-provided variables.
59
60*** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
61
62 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
63 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
64
65** Diagnostics reported by Bison
66
67 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
68 Santet.
69
70*** Carets
71
72 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
73 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
74 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
75
76 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
77 the caret information only. For instance on:
78
79 %%
80 exp: 'a' | 'a';
81
82 Bison 2.7 reports:
83
84 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
85 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
86
87 Now bison reports:
88
89 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
90 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
91 exp: 'a' | 'a';
92 ^^^
93
94 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
95
96 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
97 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
98
99*** Enhancements of the -Werror option
100
101 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
102 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
103 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
104
105 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
106 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
107 errors (and only those):
108
109 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
110
111 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
112 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
113
114 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
115
116 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
117
118 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
119 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
120
121 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
122 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
123 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
124
125*** The display of warnings is now richer
126
127 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
128
129 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
130
131 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
132 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
133 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
134
135 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
136 with failure):
137
138 bison: warnings being treated as errors
139 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
140
141 it now reports:
142
143 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
144
145*** Deprecated constructs
146
147 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
148 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
149 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
150
151*** Useless semantic types
152
153 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
154 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
155 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
156 types that trigger the warning:
157
158 %token <type1> term
159 %type <type2> nterm
160 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
161 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
162 %%
163 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
164
165 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
166 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
167
168*** Undefined but unused symbols
169
170 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
171 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
172
173 %printer {} symbol1
174 %destructor {} symbol2
175 %type <type> symbol3
176 %%
177 exp: "a";
178
179*** Useless destructors or printers
180
181 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
182 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
183 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
184 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
185
186 %token <type1> token1
187 <type2> token2
188 <type3> token3
189 <type4> token4
190 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
191 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
192
193*** Conflicts
194
195 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
196 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
197
198 %glr-parser
199 %%
200 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
201
202 compare the previous version of bison:
203
204 $ bison foo.y
205 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
206 $ bison -Werror foo.y
207 bison: warnings being treated as errors
208 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
209
210 with the new behavior:
211
212 $ bison foo.y
213 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
214 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
215 $ bison -Werror foo.y
216 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
217 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
218
219 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
220
221 %expect 0
222 %glr-parser
223 %%
224 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
225
226 Former behavior:
227
228 $ bison bar.y
229 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
230 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
231 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
232
233 New one:
234
235 $ bison bar.y
236 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
237 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
238
239** Incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc
240
241 The 'yacc' category is no longer part of '-Wall', enable it explicitly
242 with '-Wyacc'.
243
244** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
245
246 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
247 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
248 or more arguments. Instead of
249
250 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
251 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
252 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
253 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
254
255 one may now declare
256
257 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
258
259** Variable api.token.prefix
260
261 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
262 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
263 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
264
265 %token FILE for ERROR
266 %define api.token.prefix "TOK_"
267 %%
268 start: FILE for ERROR;
269
270 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
271 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
272 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
273 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
274
275** Variable api.value.type
276
277 This new %define variable supersedes the #define macro YYSTYPE. The use
278 of YYSTYPE is discouraged. In particular, #defining YYSTYPE *and* either
279 using %union or %defining api.value.type results in undefined behavior.
280
281 Either define api.value.type, or use "%union":
282
283 %union
284 {
285 int ival;
286 char *sval;
287 }
288 %token <ival> INT "integer"
289 %token <sval> STRING "string"
290 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <ival>
291 %destructor { free ($$); } <sval>
292
293 /* In yylex(). */
294 yylval.ival = 42; return INT;
295 yylval.sval = "42"; return STRING;
296
297 The %define variable api.value.type supports several special values. The
298 keyword value 'union' means that the user provides genuine types, not
299 union member names such as "ival" and "sval" above (WARNING: will fail if
300 -y/--yacc/%yacc is enabled).
301
302 %define api.value.type union
303 %token <int> INT "integer"
304 %token <char *> STRING "string"
305 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <int>
306 %destructor { free ($$); } <char *>
307
308 /* In yylex(). */
309 yylval.INT = 42; return INT;
310 yylval.STRING = "42"; return STRING;
311
312 The keyword value variant is somewhat equivalent, but for C++ special
313 provision is made to allow classes to be used (more about this below).
314
315 %define api.value.type variant
316 %token <int> INT "integer"
317 %token <std::string> STRING "string"
318
319 Values between braces denote user defined types. This is where YYSTYPE
320 used to be used.
321
322 %code requires
323 {
324 struct my_value
325 {
326 enum
327 {
328 is_int, is_string
329 } kind;
330 union
331 {
332 int ival;
333 char *sval;
334 } u;
335 };
336 }
337 %define api.value.type {struct my_value}
338 %token <u.ival> INT "integer"
339 %token <u.sval> STRING "string"
340 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <u.ival>
341 %destructor { free ($$); } <u.sval>
342
343 /* In yylex(). */
344 yylval.u.ival = 42; return INT;
345 yylval.u.sval = "42"; return STRING;
346
347** Variable parse.error
348
349 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
350 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
351 verbose".
352
353** Renamed %define variables
354
355 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
356 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
357
358 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
359 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
360 namespace -> api.namespace
361 stype -> api.value.type
362
363** Semantic predicates
364
365 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
366
367 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
368 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
369 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
370 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
371 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
372 expressions.
373
374** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
375
376 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
377 reduce/reduce conflicts.
378
379** Tokens are numbered in their order of appearance
380
381 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
382
383 With '%token A B', A had a number less than the one of B. However,
384 precedence declarations used to generate a reversed order. This is now
385 fixed, and introducing tokens with any of %token, %left, %right,
386 %precedence, or %nonassoc yields the same result.
387
388 When mixing declarations of tokens with a litteral character (e.g., 'a')
389 or with an identifier (e.g., B) in a precedence declaration, Bison
390 numbered the litteral characters first. For example
391
392 %right A B 'c' 'd'
393
394 would lead to the tokens declared in this order: 'c' 'd' A B. Again, the
395 input order is now preserved.
396
397 These changes were made so that one can remove useless precedence and
398 associativity declarations (i.e., map %nonassoc, %left or %right to
399 %precedence, or to %token) and get exactly the same output.
400
401** Useless precedence and associativity
402
403 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
404
405 When developing and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
406 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
407 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
408 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
409 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
410 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
411 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
412
413*** Precedence warning category
414
415 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
416 useless precedence and associativity directives.
417
418*** Useless associativity
419
420 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
421 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
422 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
423 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
424 For example:
425
426 %left '+'
427 %left '*'
428 %%
429 exp:
430 "number"
431 | exp '+' "number"
432 | exp '*' exp
433 ;
434
435 will produce a
436
437 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
438 %left '+'
439 ^^^
440
441*** Useless precedence
442
443 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
444 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
445 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
446 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
447
448 %precedence '='
449 %%
450 exp: "var" '=' "number";
451
452 will produce a
453
454 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
455 %precedence '='
456 ^^^
457
458*** Useless precedence and associativity
459
460 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
461 as follows:
462
463 %nonassoc '='
464 %%
465 exp: "var" '=' "number";
466
467 The warning is:
468
469 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
470 %nonassoc '='
471 ^^^
472
473** Empty rules
474
475 With help from Joel E. Denny and Gabriel Rassoul.
476
477 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
478 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
479 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
480 %empty. On the following grammar:
481
482 %%
483 s: a b c;
484 a: ;
485 b: %empty;
486 c: 'a' %empty;
487
488 bison reports:
489
490 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
491 a: {}
492 ^^
493 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
494 c: 'a' %empty {};
495 ^^^^^^
496
497** Java skeleton improvements
498
499 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
500
501 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
502 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
503 and "%define init_throws".
504
505** C++ skeletons improvements
506
507*** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
508
509 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
510 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
511 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
512
513*** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
514
515 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
516
517*** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
518
519 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
520 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
521 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
522 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
523 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
524 factory invoked by the user actions).
525
526*** %define api.value.type variant
527
528 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
529 from Théophile Ranquet.
530
531 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
532 instance:
533
534 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
535 %token <int> NUMBER;
536 %token SEMICOLON ";"
537 %type <::std::string> item;
538 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
539 %%
540 result:
541 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
542 ;
543
544 list:
545 %empty { /* Generates an empty string list. */ }
546 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
547 ;
548
549 item:
550 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
551 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
552 ;
553
554*** %define api.token.constructor
555
556 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
557 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
558 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
559
560 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
561 {
562 parser::location_type loc = ...;
563 ...
564 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
565 ...
566 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
567 ...
568 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
569 ...
570 }
571
572* Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
573
574** Bug fixes
575
576 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
577
578 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
579
580** Diagnostics are improved
581
582 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
583
584*** Changes in the format of error messages
585
586 This used to be the format of many error reports:
587
588 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
589 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
590
591 It is now:
592
593 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
594 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
595
596*** New format for error reports: carets
597
598 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
599
600 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
601 %type <sval> exp
602 ^^^^^^
603 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
604 %type <ival> exp
605 ^^^^^^
606
607 or
608
609 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
610 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
611 ^^^^
612 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
613 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
614 ^^^
615 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
616 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
617 ^^^
618 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
619 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
620 ^^^
621
622 The default behavior for now is still not to display these unless
623 explicitly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
624 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
625 -fno-caret).
626
627** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
628
629 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
630 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
631 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
632 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
633 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
634 parsers).
635
636 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
637 "%define api.pure full".
638
639** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
640
641 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
642 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
643 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
644 then responsible to define her type.
645
646 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
647 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
648 them.
649
650 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
651 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
652 compatibility).
653
654 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
655 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
656 api.position.type.
657
658** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
659
660 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
661 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
662 before re-throwing the exception.
663
664 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
665 appreciated.
666
667** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
668
669 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
670
671 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
672 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
673 numbered and left-justified.
674
675 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
676 diamond shaped nodes.
677
678 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
679 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
680
681** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
682
683 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
684 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
685
686** Documentation
687
688 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
689 have been fixed and extended.
690
691 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
692 were not properly documented.
693
694 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
695
696* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
697
698 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
699 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
700 reporting them to us.
701
702** Bug fixes
703
704 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
705 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
706 3.2.
707
708 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
709
710 Null characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
711
712 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
713 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
714
715* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
716
717 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
718
719* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
720
721** Bug fixes
722
723 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
724
725 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
726 users to the appropriate place to report them.
727
728 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
729
730 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
731 generated, are removed.
732
733 All the generated headers are self-contained.
734
735** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
736
737 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
738 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
739 For instance the header generated from
740
741 %define api.prefix "calc"
742 %defines "lib/parse.h"
743
744 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
745
746** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
747
748 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
749 warnings such as:
750
751 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
752 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
753 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
754 *++yyvsp = yylval;
755 ^
756
757 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
758
759 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
760 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
761 addressed.
762
763* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
764
765** Bug fixes
766
767 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
768 suite have been fixed.
769
770** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
771
772 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
773 invalid C++. This is fixed.
774
775** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
776
777 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
778
779* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
780
781 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
782
783** Future Changes
784
785 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
786 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
787 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
788
789 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
790
791 write:
792
793 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
794
795** Bug fixes
796
797*** Type names are now properly escaped.
798
799*** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
800
801*** Stray @ or $ in actions
802
803 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
804 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
805 now does.
806
807** Type names in actions
808
809 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
810 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
811
812 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
813
814 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
815 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
816
817* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
818
819** Future changes
820
821 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
822 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
823
824*** K&R C parsers
825
826 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
827 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
828 compilers.
829
830*** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
831
832 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
833 YYLTYPE.
834
835 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
836 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
837
838 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
839 %error-verbose.
840
841*** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
842
843 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
844 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
845 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
846 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
847 it.
848
849** Generated Parser Headers
850
851*** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
852
853 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
854 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
855
856 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
857 # define YY_FOO_H
858 ...
859 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
860
861*** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
862
863 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
864 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
865
866 int bar_parse (void);
867
868 rather than
869
870 #define yyparse bar_parse
871 int yyparse (void);
872
873 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
874 single compilation unit.
875
876*** Exported symbols in C++
877
878 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
879 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
880 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
881
882*** YYLSP_NEEDED
883
884 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
885 longer defined.
886
887** New %define variable: api.prefix
888
889 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
890 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
891 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
892 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
893 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
894 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
895 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
896
897 The following examples compares both:
898
899 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
900 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
901 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
902 %% %%
903 exp: 'a'; exp: 'a';
904
905 bison generates:
906
907 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
908 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
909
910 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
911 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
912 > # if defined YYDEBUG
913 > # if YYDEBUG
914 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
915 > # else
916 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
917 > # endif
918 > # else
919 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
920 > # endif
921 # endif | # endif
922
923 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
924 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
925 # endif # endif
926
927 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
928 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
929 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
930 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
931 FOO = 258 FOO = 258
932 }; };
933 # endif # endif
934
935 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
936 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
937 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
938 { {
939 int ival; int ival;
940 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
941 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
942 #endif #endif
943
944 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
945
946 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
947
948 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
949
950* Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
951
952** Future changes:
953
954 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
955
956** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
957
958** glr.c improvements:
959
960*** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
961
962 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
963 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
964
965*** __attribute__ is preserved:
966
967 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
968 when -std is passed to GCC).
969
970** lalr1.java: several fixes:
971
972 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
973 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
974
975** Changes for C++:
976
977*** C++11 compatibility:
978
979 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
980 or higher.
981
982*** Header guards
983
984 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
985 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
986
987 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
988 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
989 ...
990 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
991
992 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
993 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
994 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
995
996 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
997
998 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
999 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1000 ...
1001 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1002
1003*** C++ locations:
1004
1005 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
1006 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
1007 documentation were fixed.
1008
1009** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
1010
1011** Changes in the manual:
1012
1013*** %printer is documented
1014
1015 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
1016 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
1017
1018 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
1019 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
1020
1021*** Several improvements have been made:
1022
1023 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
1024 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
1025 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
1026 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
1027
1028** Building bison:
1029
1030*** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
1031
1032 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
1033 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
1034
1035*** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
1036
1037*** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
1038
1039 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
1040 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
1041
1042*** The install-pdf target works properly:
1043
1044 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
1045 halts in the middle of its course.
1046
1047* Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
1048
1049** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
1050
1051 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
1052 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
1053 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
1054 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
1055 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
1056
1057** Named references:
1058
1059 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
1060 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
1061 actions code.
1062
1063 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
1064 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
1065 as named references:
1066
1067 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
1068 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
1069
1070 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
1071
1072 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
1073 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
1074
1075 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
1076 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
1077 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
1078
1079 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
1080 will help to stabilize them.
1081 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
1082
1083** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
1084
1085 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
1086 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
1087 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
1088 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
1089 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
1090 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
1091 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
1092 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
1093 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
1094
1095 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
1096 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
1097 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
1098 file with these directives:
1099
1100 %define lr.type lalr
1101 %define lr.type ielr
1102 %define lr.type canonical-lr
1103
1104 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
1105 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
1106 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
1107 manual.
1108
1109 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1110 stabilize them.
1111
1112** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
1113
1114 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
1115
1116 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
1117 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
1118 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
1119 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
1120 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
1121 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
1122 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
1123 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
1124 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
1125 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
1126 tokens.
1127
1128 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
1129 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
1130 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
1131 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
1132 inconsistent states.
1133
1134 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
1135 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
1136 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
1137 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
1138 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
1139 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
1140 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
1141 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
1142 power.
1143
1144 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
1145 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
1146
1147 %define parse.lac full
1148
1149 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
1150 details including a few caveats.
1151
1152 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
1153 stabilize it.
1154
1155** %define improvements:
1156
1157*** Can now be invoked via the command line:
1158
1159 Each of these command-line options
1160
1161 -D NAME[=VALUE]
1162 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
1163
1164 -F NAME[=VALUE]
1165 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
1166
1167 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
1168
1169 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
1170
1171 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
1172 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
1173 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
1174 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
1175
1176*** Variables renamed:
1177
1178 The following %define variables
1179
1180 api.push_pull
1181 lr.keep_unreachable_states
1182
1183 have been renamed to
1184
1185 api.push-pull
1186 lr.keep-unreachable-states
1187
1188 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
1189 for backward compatibility.
1190
1191*** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
1192
1193 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
1194 within quotations marks. For example,
1195
1196 %define api.push-pull "push"
1197
1198 can be rewritten as
1199
1200 %define api.push-pull push
1201
1202*** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1203
1204*** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1205
1206** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1207
1208** Character literals not of length one:
1209
1210 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1211 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1212 the following grammar to be the same token:
1213
1214 exp: exp '++'
1215 | exp '+' exp
1216 ;
1217
1218 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1219 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1220
1221** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1222
1223 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1224 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1225 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1226 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1227
1228** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1229
1230 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1231 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1232 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1233 and "last" members, instead of
1234
1235 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1236 do \
1237 if (N) \
1238 { \
1239 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1240 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1241 } \
1242 else \
1243 { \
1244 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1245 } \
1246 while (false)
1247
1248 use:
1249
1250 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1251 do \
1252 if (N) \
1253 { \
1254 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1255 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1256 } \
1257 else \
1258 { \
1259 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1260 } \
1261 while (false)
1262
1263** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1264
1265 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1266 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1267 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1268 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1269
1270** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1271
1272 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1273 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1274 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1275 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1276 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1277 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1278 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1279 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1280
1281** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1282
1283 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1284 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1285 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1286 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1287
1288 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1289
1290 instead of
1291
1292 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1293
1294 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1295 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1296 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1297 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1298 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1299 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1300 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1301
1302** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1303
1304 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1305 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1306 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1307 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1308 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1309
1310*** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1311 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1312 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1313 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1314 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1315 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1316 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1317 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1318 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1319 shifted or discarded.
1320
1321*** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1322 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1323 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1324 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1325
1326*** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1327 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1328 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1329 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1330 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1331 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1332 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1333 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1334 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1335 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1336 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1337 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1338 by default.
1339
1340** Java skeleton fixes:
1341
1342*** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1343
1344*** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1345 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1346
1347*** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1348
1349** -W/--warnings fixes:
1350
1351*** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1352
1353 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1354 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1355
1356 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1357
1358*** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1359
1360 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1361 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1362 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1363 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1364 example:
1365
1366 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1367 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1368 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1369 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1370
1371 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1372 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1373 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1374 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1375
1376*** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1377
1378 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1379 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1380
1381 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1382
1383*** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1384
1385 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1386 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1387 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1388 suppress all warnings:
1389
1390 bison -Wnone gram.y
1391
1392** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1393
1394 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1395 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1396 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1397
1398 %left END 0
1399
1400 This bug has been fixed.
1401
1402* Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1403
1404** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1405 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1406
1407** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1408 been fixed.
1409
1410** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1411
1412** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1413 been fixed.
1414
1415** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1416 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1417 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1418 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1419
1420** Minor documentation fixes.
1421
1422* Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1423
1424** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1425 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1426 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1427 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1428 affected platforms.
1429
1430** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1431
1432 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1433 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1434 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1435 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1436 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1437 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1438 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1439 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1440 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1441
1442** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1443
1444** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1445 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1446 avoided.
1447
1448** %code is now a permanent feature.
1449
1450 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1451
1452 %{CODE%}
1453
1454 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1455 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1456
1457 %code {CODE}
1458 %code requires {CODE}
1459 %code provides {CODE}
1460 %code top {CODE}
1461
1462 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1463 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1464 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1465 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1466 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1467
1468 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1469 is still considered experimental.
1470
1471** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1472
1473 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1474 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1475 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1476 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1477 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1478 specified by POSIX.
1479
1480 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1481 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1482 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1483 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1484 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1485 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1486 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1487
1488 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1489
1490 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1491 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1492 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1493 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1494 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1495 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1496 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1497 be removed altogether.
1498
1499 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1500 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1501 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1502 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1503 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1504 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1505 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1506 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1507 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1508 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1509
1510** Internationalization.
1511
1512 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1513 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1514 host system.
1515
1516* Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1517
1518** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1519 declarations have been fixed.
1520
1521** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1522
1523 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1524 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1525
1526 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1527
1528 instead of
1529
1530 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1531
1532 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1533 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1534 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1535 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1536 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1537 feature.
1538
1539** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1540
1541* Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1542
1543** %language is an experimental feature.
1544
1545 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1546 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1547 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1548 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1549 in future releases.
1550
1551** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1552
1553** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1554 fixed.
1555
1556* Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1557
1558** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1559 are now deprecated:
1560
1561 %define NAME "VALUE"
1562
1563** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1564
1565 %define api.pure
1566
1567 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1568 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1569
1570** Push Parsing
1571
1572 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1573 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1574 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1575 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1576 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1577
1578 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1579 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1580
1581 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1582
1583 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1584 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1585
1586** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1587 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1588 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1589
1590** Java
1591
1592 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1593 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1594 %skeleton to select it.
1595
1596 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1597
1598 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1599 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1600 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1601
1602** %language
1603
1604 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1605 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1606 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1607 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1608
1609** XML Automaton Report
1610
1611 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1612 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1613 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1614 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1615
1616** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1617 %defines. For example:
1618
1619 %defines "parser.h"
1620
1621** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1622 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1623 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1624 instead of "unused".
1625
1626** Unreachable State Removal
1627
1628 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1629 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1630 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1631
1632 1. Removes unreachable states.
1633
1634 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1635 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1636 directives in existing grammar files.
1637
1638 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1639 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1640
1641 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1642
1643 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1644
1645 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1646 for further discussion.
1647
1648** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1649
1650 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1651 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1652 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1653 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1654 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1655 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1656 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1657 code.
1658
1659** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1660 name.
1661
1662** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1663 deprecated:
1664
1665 %file-prefix "parser"
1666 %name-prefix "c_"
1667 %output "parser.c"
1668
1669** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1670
1671 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1672 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1673 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1674 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1675 it:
1676
1677 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1678 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1679 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1680 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1681
1682 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1683 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1684 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1685 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1686
1687 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1688 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1689
1690** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1691
1692 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1693 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1694 about unused $2 in:
1695
1696 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1697
1698 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1699 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1700
1701 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1702
1703 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1704 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1705 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1706
1707 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1708 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1709
1710** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1711
1712 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1713 %printer's:
1714
1715 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1716 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1717 declared semantic type tags.
1718
1719 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1720 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1721 type tags.
1722
1723 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1724 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1725 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1726 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1727
1728 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1729 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1730 features.
1731
1732 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1733 details.
1734
1735** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1736 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1737 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1738
1739** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1740 completely removed from Bison.
1741
1742* Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1743
1744** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1745 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1746 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1747 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1748 and is required by POSIX.
1749
1750** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1751 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1752
1753** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1754
1755 For example:
1756
1757 %union { char *string; }
1758 %token <string> STRING1
1759 %token <string> STRING2
1760 %type <string> string1
1761 %type <string> string2
1762 %union { char character; }
1763 %token <character> CHR
1764 %type <character> chr
1765 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1766 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1767 %destructor { } <character>
1768
1769 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1770 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1771 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1772 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1773 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1774
1775 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1776 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1777 future versions.]
1778
1779** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1780 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1781 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1782 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1783 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1784
1785** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1786 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1787
1788 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1789 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1790 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1791 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1792 declared after the first %union.
1793
1794 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1795 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1796 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1797 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1798 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1799 after the token definitions.
1800
1801 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1802 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1803
1804** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1805 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1806 %after-header.
1807
1808 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1809 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1810 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1811 convenient for you:
1812
1813 %before-header {
1814 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1815 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1816 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1817 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1818 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1819 }
1820 %start-header {
1821 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1822 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1823 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1824 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1825 }
1826 %union {
1827 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1828 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1829 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1830 }
1831 %end-header {
1832 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1833 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1834 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1835 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1836 * definitions. */
1837 }
1838 %after-header {
1839 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1840 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1841 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1842 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1843 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1844 }
1845
1846 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1847 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1848
1849 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1850 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1851
1852** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1853 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1854 in a future release.
1855
1856* Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1857
1858** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1859 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1860
1861** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1862 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1863
1864* Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1865
1866** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1867 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1868 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1869
1870** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1871
1872** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1873
1874** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1875 their contents together.
1876
1877** New warning: unused values
1878 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1879 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1880
1881 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1882 | exp "+" exp
1883 ;
1884
1885 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1886 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1887 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1888
1889 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1890 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1891 | exp "+" exp
1892 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1893 ;
1894
1895 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1896 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1897 values are used, e.g.:
1898
1899 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1900 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1901 ;
1902
1903 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1904 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1905
1906 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1907
1908 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1909 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1910
1911** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1912 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1913 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1914 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1915
1916** %expect, %expect-rr
1917 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1918 instead of warnings.
1919
1920** GLR, YACC parsers.
1921 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1922 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1923
1924** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1925
1926** %require "VERSION"
1927 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1928 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1929
1930** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1931 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1932 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1933 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1934 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1935
1936 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1937 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1938 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1939 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1940
1941 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1942 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1943
1944** DJGPP support added.
1945\f
1946* Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1947
1948** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1949
1950** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1951 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1952 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1953 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1954 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1955 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1956
1957** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1958 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1959 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1960 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1961
1962** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1963 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1964 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1965
1966** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1967 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1968 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1969 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1970 unexpected "number"'.
1971\f
1972* Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1973
1974** Possibly-incompatible changes
1975
1976 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1977 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1978 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1979 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1980 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1981
1982 - Error token location.
1983 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1984 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1985 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1986 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1987
1988 - Semicolon changes:
1989 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1990 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1991
1992 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1993 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1994 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1995 forget a closing quote.
1996
1997 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1998
1999** New features
2000
2001 - GLR grammars now support locations.
2002
2003 - New directive: %initial-action.
2004 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
2005 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
2006
2007 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
2008 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
2009
2010 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
2011 This is a GNU extension.
2012
2013 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
2014 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
2015
2016 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
2017
2018 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
2019 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
2020
2021** Bug fixes
2022
2023 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
2024 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
2025 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
2026 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
2027 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
2028 these violations will become errors again.
2029
2030 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
2031 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
2032
2033 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
2034\f
2035* Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
2036
2037** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
2038 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
2039
2040** syntax error processing
2041
2042 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
2043 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
2044
2045 - %destructor
2046 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
2047 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
2048
2049 - %error-verbose
2050 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
2051
2052 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
2053 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
2054
2055** POSIX conformance
2056
2057 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
2058 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
2059 compatibility with Yacc.
2060
2061 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
2062 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
2063 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
2064 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
2065 be consistent.
2066
2067 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
2068 declared before use. C99 requires this.
2069
2070 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
2071 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
2072
2073 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
2074 output as "foo\\bar.y".
2075
2076 - Yacc command and library now available
2077 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
2078 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
2079 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
2080 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
2081
2082 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
2083
2084 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
2085 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
2086 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
2087
2088** Other compatibility issues
2089
2090 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
2091 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
2092 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
2093 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
2094 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
2095 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
2096
2097 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
2098 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
2099
2100 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
2101 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
2102
2103 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
2104 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
2105 withdrawn in a future release.
2106
2107** GLR parser notes
2108
2109 - GLR and inline
2110 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
2111 C keyword "inline".
2112
2113 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
2114 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
2115
2116** %parse-param and %lex-param
2117 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
2118 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
2119 shortcomings:
2120
2121 - a single argument only can be added,
2122 - their types are weak (void *),
2123 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
2124 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
2125
2126 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
2127 For instance:
2128
2129 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
2130 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
2131 %parse-param {int *randomness}
2132
2133 results in the following signatures:
2134
2135 int yylex (int *nastiness);
2136 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2137
2138 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
2139
2140 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
2141 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2142
2143** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
2144 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
2145 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
2146
2147** #line in output files
2148 - --no-line works properly.
2149
2150** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
2151 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
2152 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
2153 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
2154\f
2155* Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
2156
2157** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
2158
2159** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
2160
2161** GLR parsers
2162 Fix spurious parse errors.
2163
2164** Pure parsers
2165 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
2166 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
2167
2168** Type Clashes
2169 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
2170 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
2171
2172 untyped: ... typed;
2173
2174 but the converse remains an error:
2175
2176 typed: ... untyped;
2177
2178** Values of mid-rule actions
2179 The following code:
2180
2181 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
2182
2183 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
2184 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
2185\f
2186* Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
2187
2188** GLR parsing
2189 The declaration
2190 %glr-parser
2191 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
2192 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
2193 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
2194 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2195
2196 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
2197 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
2198
2199** Output Directory
2200 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2201 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2202 now creates "bar.c".
2203
2204** Undefined token
2205 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2206 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2207
2208** Unknown token numbers
2209 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2210 no longer the case.
2211
2212** Error token
2213 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2214 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2215 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2216 will be mapped onto another number.
2217
2218** Verbose error messages
2219 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2220 error recovery is possible.
2221
2222** End token
2223 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2224
2225** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2226 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2227 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2228 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2229 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2230 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2231 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2232 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2233 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2234
2235** Traces
2236 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2237
2238** Larger grammars
2239 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2240 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2241 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2242 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2243
2244** Explicit initial rule
2245 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2246 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2247 graphs as rule 0.
2248
2249** Useless rules
2250 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2251 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2252
2253** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2254 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2255
2256** Rules never reduced
2257 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2258 reported.
2259
2260** Incorrect "Token not used"
2261 On a grammar such as
2262
2263 %token useless useful
2264 %%
2265 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2266
2267 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2268 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2269
2270** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2271 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2272
2273** Default locations
2274 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2275 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2276 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2277 the computation of @$.
2278
2279** Token end-of-file
2280 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2281 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2282 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2283 For instance
2284 %token MYEOF 0
2285 or
2286 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2287
2288** Semantic parser
2289 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2290
2291** New translations
2292 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2293 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2294
2295** Incorrect token definitions
2296 When given
2297 %token 'a' "A"
2298 bison used to output
2299 #define 'a' 65
2300
2301** Token definitions as enums
2302 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2303 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2304 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2305
2306** Reports
2307 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2308 produces additional information:
2309 - itemset
2310 complete the core item sets with their closure
2311 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2312 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2313 - solved
2314 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2315 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2316 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2317
2318** Type clashes
2319 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2320 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2321
2322 %type <foo> bar
2323 %%
2324 bar: '0' {} '0';
2325
2326 This is fixed.
2327
2328** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2329\f
2330* Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2331
2332** C Skeleton
2333 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2334 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2335 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2336
2337 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2338 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2339 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2340 kludge will be disabled.
2341
2342 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2343 extended.
2344\f
2345* Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2346
2347** File name clashes are detected
2348 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2349 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2350
2351** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2352 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2353 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2354 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2355 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2356 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2357
2358** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2359 many portability hassles.
2360
2361** DJGPP support added.
2362
2363** Fix test suite portability problems.
2364\f
2365* Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2366
2367** Fix C++ issues
2368 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2369 under some conditions.
2370
2371** Catch invalid @n
2372 As is done with $n.
2373\f
2374* Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2375
2376** Fix Yacc output file names
2377
2378** Portability fixes
2379
2380** Italian, Dutch translations
2381\f
2382* Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2383
2384** Many Bug Fixes
2385
2386** GNU Gettext and %expect
2387 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2388 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2389 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2390 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2391
2392** Use of alloca in parsers
2393 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2394 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2395
2396 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2397 problems as on AIX.
2398
2399** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2400
2401** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2402 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2403
2404** User Actions
2405 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2406 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2407 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2408
2409** Better C++ compliance
2410 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2411 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2412
2413** Reduced Grammars
2414 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2415
2416** 64 bit hosts
2417 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2418
2419** Error messages
2420 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2421
2422** %expect
2423 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2424 any warning.
2425
2426** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2427
2428** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2429
2430** Swedish translation
2431
2432** Parse errors
2433 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2434 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2435 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2436
2437** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2438 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2439 previous allocations were not freed.
2440
2441** Fixed verbose output file.
2442 Some newlines were missing.
2443 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2444
2445** Fixed conflict report.
2446 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2447
2448** %expect
2449 Was not used.
2450 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2451
2452** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2453
2454** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2455
2456** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2457
2458** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2459 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2460
2461** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2462
2463** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2464 New.
2465
2466** --output
2467 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2468\f
2469* Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2470
2471** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2472 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2473 argument.
2474
2475** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2476 experiment.
2477
2478** Portability fixes.
2479\f
2480* Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2481
2482** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2483 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2484 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2485 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2486
2487** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2488
2489** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2490
2491** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2492
2493** Russian translation added.
2494
2495** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2496
2497** Added the old Bison reference card.
2498
2499** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2500
2501** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2502
2503** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2504
2505** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2506 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2507
2508** New directives.
2509 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2510 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2511
2512** @$
2513 Automatic location tracking.
2514\f
2515* Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2516
2517** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2518
2519** Added NLS.
2520
2521** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2522
2523** There is now a FAQ.
2524\f
2525* Changes in version 1.27:
2526
2527** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2528 some systems has been fixed.
2529\f
2530* Changes in version 1.26:
2531
2532** Bison now uses Automake.
2533
2534** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2535
2536** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2537
2538** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2539
2540** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2541
2542** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2543
2544** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2545 not provide alloca().
2546\f
2547* Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2548
2549** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2550the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2551
2552** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2553example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2554of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2555
2556** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2557and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2558table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2559purposes.
2560
2561** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2562directives in the parser file.
2563
2564** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2565Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2566
2567** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2568the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2569The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2570a switch statement body.
2571\f
2572* Changes in version 1.23:
2573
2574The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2575passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2576actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2577by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2578
2579Line numbers in output file corrected.
2580\f
2581* Changes in version 1.22:
2582
2583--help option added.
2584\f
2585* Changes in version 1.20:
2586
2587Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2588
2589-----
2590
2591Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2592
2593This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2594
2595This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2596it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2597the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2598(at your option) any later version.
2599
2600This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2601but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2602MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2603GNU General Public License for more details.
2604
2605You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2606along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2607
2608 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2609 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2610 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2611 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2612 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2613 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2614 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2615 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2616 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2617 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2618 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2619 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2620 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2621 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2622 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2623 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2624 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2625 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2626 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts parsers yystackp yyval yynerrs
2627 LocalWords: Théophile Ranquet Santet fno fnone stype associativity Tolmer
2628 LocalWords: Wprecedence Rassoul Wempty Paolo Bonzini parser's Michiel loc
2629 LocalWords: redeclaration sval fcaret reentrant XSLT xsl Wmaybe yyvsp Tedi
2630 LocalWords: pragmas noreturn untyped Rozenman unexpanded Wojciech Polak
2631 LocalWords: Alexandre MERCHANTABILITY yytype
2632
2633Local Variables:
2634mode: outline
2635fill-column: 76
2636End: