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1Bison News
2----------
3
4Changes in version 2.1a:
5
6Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
7
8* Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
9 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
10 language is still English. For details, please see the new
11 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
12 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
13 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
14
15* Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
16 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
17 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
18 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
19
20* Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
21 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
22 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
23
24* When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
25 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
26 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
27 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
28 unexpected "number"'.
29
30Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
31
32* Possibly-incompatible changes
33
34 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
35 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
36 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
37 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
38 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
39
40 - Error token location.
41 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
42 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
43 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
44 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
45
46 - Semicolon changes:
47 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
48 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
49
50 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
51 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
52 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
53 forget a closing quote.
54
55 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
56
57* New features
58
59 - GLR grammars now support locations.
60
61 - New directive: %initial-action.
62 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
63 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
64
65 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
66 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
67
68 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., `%token FOO 0x12d'.
69 This is a GNU extension.
70
71 - The option `--report=lookahead' was changed to `--report=look-ahead'.
72 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and will be
73 removed.
74
75 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
76
77 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
78 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
79
80* Bug fixes
81
82 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
83 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
84 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
85 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
86 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
87 these violations will become errors again.
88
89 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
90 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
91
92 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
93\f
94Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
95
96* The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
97 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
98
99* syntax error processing
100
101 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
102 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
103
104 - %destructor
105 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
106 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
107
108 - %error-verbose
109 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
110
111 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
112 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
113
114* POSIX conformance
115
116 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
117 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
118 compatibility with Yacc.
119
120 - `parse error' -> `syntax error'
121 Bison now uniformly uses the term `syntax error'; formerly, the code
122 and manual sometimes used the term `parse error' instead. POSIX
123 requires `syntax error' in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
124 be consistent.
125
126 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
127 declared before use. C99 requires this.
128
129 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
130 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
131
132 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
133 output as "foo\\bar.y".
134
135 - Yacc command and library now available
136 The Bison distribution now installs a `yacc' command, as POSIX requires.
137 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
138 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
139 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
140
141 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
142
143 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
144 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
145 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
146
147* Other compatibility issues
148
149 - %union directives can now have a tag before the `{', e.g., the
150 directive `%union foo {...}' now generates the C code
151 `typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;'; this is for Yacc compatibility.
152 The default union tag is `YYSTYPE', for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
153 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now `YYLTYPE' not `yyltype'.
154 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
155
156 - `;' is output before the terminating `}' of an action, for
157 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
158
159 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
160 `conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce'.
161
162 - `yystype' and `yyltype' are now obsolescent macros instead of being
163 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
164 withdrawn in a future release.
165
166* GLR parser notes
167
168 - GLR and inline
169 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
170 C keyword `inline'.
171
172 - `parsing stack overflow...' -> `parser stack overflow'
173 GLR parsers now report `parser stack overflow' as per the Bison manual.
174
175* Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
176 e.g., it generates a warning for `bison -d -o foo.h foo.y' since
177 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
178
179* #line in output files
180 - --no-line works properly.
181
182* Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
183 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
184 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
185 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
186\f
187Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
188
189* Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
190
191* Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
192
193* GLR parsers
194 Fix spurious parse errors.
195
196* Pure parsers
197 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
198 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
199
200* Type Clashes
201 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
202 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
203
204 untyped: ... typed;
205
206 but the converse remains an error:
207
208 typed: ... untyped;
209
210* Values of mid-rule actions
211 The following code:
212
213 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
214
215 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
216 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
217\f
218Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
219
220* GLR parsing
221 The declaration
222 %glr-parser
223 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
224 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
225 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
226 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
227
228 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
229 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
230
231* Output Directory
232 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
233 specified, running `bison foo/bar.y' created `foo/bar.c'. It
234 now creates `bar.c'.
235
236* Undefined token
237 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
238 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
239
240* Unknown token numbers
241 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
242 no longer the case.
243
244* Error token
245 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
246 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
247 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
248 will be mapped onto another number.
249
250* Verbose error messages
251 They no longer report `..., expecting error or...' for states where
252 error recovery is possible.
253
254* End token
255 Defaults to `$end' instead of `$'.
256
257* Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
258 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
259 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
260 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
261 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
262 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
263 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
264 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
265 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
266
267* Traces
268 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
269
270* Larger grammars
271 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
272 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
273 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
274 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
275
276* Explicit initial rule
277 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
278 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
279 graphs as rule 0.
280
281* Useless rules
282 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
283 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
284
285* Useless rules, useless nonterminals
286 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
287
288* Rules never reduced
289 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
290 reported.
291
292* Incorrect `Token not used'
293 On a grammar such as
294
295 %token useless useful
296 %%
297 exp: '0' %prec useful;
298
299 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
300 bison reported both `useful' and `useless' as useless tokens.
301
302* Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
303 as they caused too many portability hassles.
304
305* Default locations
306 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
307 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
308 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
309 the computation of @$.
310
311* Token end-of-file
312 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
313 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
314 error messages instead of `$end', which remains being the default.
315 For instance
316 %token MYEOF 0
317 or
318 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
319
320* Semantic parser
321 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
322
323* New translations
324 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
325 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
326
327* Incorrect token definitions
328 When given `%token 'a' "A"', Bison used to output `#define 'a' 65'.
329
330* Token definitions as enums
331 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
332 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
333 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
334
335* Reports
336 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
337 produces additional information:
338 - itemset
339 complete the core item sets with their closure
340 - lookahead [changed to `look-ahead' in 1.875e and later]
341 explicitly associate look-ahead tokens to items
342 - solved
343 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
344 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
345 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
346
347* Type clashes
348 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
349 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
350
351 %type <foo> bar
352 %%
353 bar: '0' {} '0';
354
355 This is fixed.
356
357* GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
358\f
359Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
360
361* C Skeleton
362 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
363 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
364 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
365
366 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
367 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
368 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
369 kludge will be disabled.
370
371 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
372 extended.
373\f
374Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
375
376* File name clashes are detected
377 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
378 fatal error: header and parser would both be named `foo.x'
379
380* A missing `;' at the end of a rule triggers a warning
381 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
382 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
383 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
384 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
385 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
386
387* Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
388 many portability hassles.
389
390* DJGPP support added.
391
392* Fix test suite portability problems.
393\f
394Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
395
396* Fix C++ issues
397 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
398 under some conditions.
399
400* Catch invalid @n
401 As is done with $n.
402\f
403Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
404
405* Fix Yacc output file names
406
407* Portability fixes
408
409* Italian, Dutch translations
410\f
411Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
412
413* Many Bug Fixes
414
415* GNU Gettext and %expect
416 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
417 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
418 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
419 does not trigger an error when the input file is named `plural.y'.
420
421* Use of alloca in parsers
422 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
423 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
424
425 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
426 problems as on AIX.
427
428* yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
429
430* When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
431 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
432
433* User Actions
434 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
435 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
436 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
437
438* Better C++ compliance
439 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
440 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
441
442* Reduced Grammars
443 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
444
445* 64 bit hosts
446 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
447
448* Error messages
449 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
450
451* %expect
452 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
453 any warning.
454
455* The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
456
457* Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
458
459* Swedish translation
460
461* Parse errors
462 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
463 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
464 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
465
466* Fixed parser memory leaks.
467 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
468 previous allocations were not freed.
469
470* Fixed verbose output file.
471 Some newlines were missing.
472 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
473
474* Fixed conflict report.
475 Option -v was needed to get the result.
476
477* %expect
478 Was not used.
479 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
480
481* Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
482
483* Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
484
485* Fixed some typos in the documentation.
486
487* %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
488 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
489
490* doc/refcard.tex is updated.
491
492* %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
493 New.
494
495* --output
496 New, aliasing `--output-file'.
497\f
498Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
499
500* `--defines' and `--graph' have now an optional argument which is the
501 output file name. `-d' and `-g' do not change; they do not take any
502 argument.
503
504* `%source_extension' and `%header_extension' are removed, failed
505 experiment.
506
507* Portability fixes.
508\f
509Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
510
511* The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
512 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
513 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
514 `-Dconst='. autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
515
516* Added `-g' and `--graph'.
517
518* The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
519
520* The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
521
522* Russian translation added.
523
524* NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
525
526* Added the old Bison reference card.
527
528* Added `--locations' and `%locations'.
529
530* Added `-S' and `--skeleton'.
531
532* `%raw', `-r', `--raw' is disabled.
533
534* Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
535 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
536
537* New directives.
538 `%yacc', `%fixed_output_files', `%defines', `%no_parser', `%verbose',
539 `%debug', `%source_extension' and `%header_extension'.
540
541* @$
542 Automatic location tracking.
543\f
544Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
545
546* Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
547
548* Added NLS.
549
550* Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
551
552* There is now a FAQ.
553\f
554Changes in version 1.27:
555
556* The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
557 some systems has been fixed.
558\f
559Changes in version 1.26:
560
561* Bison now uses automake.
562
563* New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
564
565* Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
566
567* Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
568
569* A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
570
571* Problems when closing files should now be reported.
572
573* Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
574 not provide alloca().
575\f
576Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
577
578* Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
579the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
580
581* Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
582example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
583of chosing a name like LESSEQ.
584
585* The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
586and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
587table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
588purposes.
589
590* The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
591directives in the parser file.
592
593* The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
594Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
595
596* The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
597the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
598The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
599a switch statement body.
600\f
601Changes in version 1.23:
602
603The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
604passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
605actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
606by casting it to the proper pointer type.
607
608Line numbers in output file corrected.
609\f
610Changes in version 1.22:
611
612--help option added.
613\f
614Changes in version 1.20:
615
616Output file does not redefine const for C++.
617
618Local Variables:
619mode: outline
620End:
621
622-----
623
624Copyright (C) 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005
625Free Software Foundation, Inc.
626
627This file is part of Bison, the GNU Compiler Compiler.
628
629Bison is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
630it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
631the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
632any later version.
633
634Bison is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
635but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
636MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
637GNU General Public License for more details.
638
639You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
640along with autoconf; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
641the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
642Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.