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1GNU Bison NEWS
2
3* Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
6 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
7 reporting them to us.
8
9** Bug fixes
10
11 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
12 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
13 3.2.
14
15 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
16
17 Nul characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
18
19 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
20 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
21
22* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
23
24 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
25
26* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
27
28** Bug fixes
29
30 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
31
32 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
33 users to the appropriate place to report them.
34
35 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
36
37 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
38 generated, are removed.
39
40 All the generated headers are self-contained.
41
42** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
43
44 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
45 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
46 For instance the header generated from
47
48 %define api.prefix "calc"
49 %defines "lib/parse.h"
50
51 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
52
53** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
54
55 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
56 warnings such as:
57
58 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
59 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
60 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
61 *++yyvsp = yylval;
62 ^
63
64 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
65
66 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
67 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
68 addressed.
69
70* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
71
72** Bug fixes
73
74 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
75 suite have been fixed.
76
77** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
78
79 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
80 invalid C++. This is fixed.
81
82** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
83
84 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
85
86* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
87
88 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
89
90** Future Changes
91
92 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
93 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
94 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
95
96 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
97
98 write:
99
100 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
101
102** Bug fixes
103
104*** Type names are now properly escaped.
105
106*** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
107
108*** Stray @ or $ in actions
109
110 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
111 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
112 now does.
113
114** Type names in actions
115
116 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
117 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
118
119 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
120
121 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
122 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
123
124* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
125
126** Future Changes
127
128 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
129 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
130
131*** K&R C parsers
132
133 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
134 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
135 compilers.
136
137*** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
138
139 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
140 YYLTYPE.
141
142 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
143 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
144
145 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
146 %error-verbose.
147
148*** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
149
150 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
151 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
152 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
153 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
154 it.
155
156** Generated Parser Headers
157
158*** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
159
160 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
161 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
162
163 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
164 # define YY_FOO_H
165 ...
166 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
167
168*** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
169
170 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
171 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
172
173 int bar_parse (void);
174
175 rather than
176
177 #define yyparse bar_parse
178 int yyparse (void);
179
180 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
181 single compilation unit.
182
183*** Exported symbols in C++
184
185 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
186 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
187 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
188
189*** YYLSP_NEEDED
190
191 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
192 longer defined.
193
194** New %define variable: api.prefix
195
196 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
197 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
198 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
199 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
200 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
201 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
202 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
203
204 The following examples compares both:
205
206 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
207 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
208 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
209 %% %%
210 exp: 'a'; exp: 'a';
211
212 bison generates:
213
214 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
215 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
216
217 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
218 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
219 > # if defined YYDEBUG
220 > # if YYDEBUG
221 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
222 > # else
223 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
224 > # endif
225 > # else
226 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
227 > # endif
228 # endif | # endif
229
230 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
231 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
232 # endif # endif
233
234 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
235 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
236 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
237 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
238 FOO = 258 FOO = 258
239 }; };
240 # endif # endif
241
242 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
243 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
244 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
245 { {
246 int ival; int ival;
247 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
248 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
249 #endif #endif
250
251 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
252
253 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
254
255 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
256
257* Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
258
259** Future changes:
260
261 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
262
263** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
264
265** glr.c improvements:
266
267*** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
268
269 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
270 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
271
272*** __attribute__ is preserved:
273
274 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
275 when -std is passed to GCC).
276
277** lalr1.java: several fixes:
278
279 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
280 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
281
282** Changes for C++:
283
284*** C++11 compatibility:
285
286 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
287 or higher.
288
289*** Header guards
290
291 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
292 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
293
294 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
295 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
296 ...
297 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
298
299 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
300 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
301 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
302
303 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
304
305 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
306 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
307 ...
308 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
309
310*** C++ locations:
311
312 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
313 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
314 documentation were fixed.
315
316** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
317
318** Changes in the manual:
319
320*** %printer is documented
321
322 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
323 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
324
325 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
326 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
327
328*** Several improvements have been made:
329
330 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
331 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
332 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
333 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
334
335** Building bison:
336
337*** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
338
339 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
340 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
341
342*** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
343
344*** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
345
346 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
347 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
348
349*** The install-pdf target works properly:
350
351 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
352 halts in the middle of its course.
353
354* Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
355
356** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
357
358 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
359 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
360 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
361 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
362 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
363
364** Named references:
365
366 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
367 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
368 actions code.
369
370 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
371 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
372 as named references:
373
374 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
375 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
376
377 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
378
379 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
380 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
381
382 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
383 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
384 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
385
386 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
387 will help to stabilize them.
388
389** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
390
391 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
392 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
393 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
394 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
395 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
396 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
397 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
398 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
399 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
400
401 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
402 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
403 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
404 file with these directives:
405
406 %define lr.type lalr
407 %define lr.type ielr
408 %define lr.type canonical-lr
409
410 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
411 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
412 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
413 manual.
414
415 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
416 stabilize them.
417
418** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
419
420 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
421 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
422 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
423 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
424 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
425 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
426 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
427 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
428 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
429 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
430 tokens.
431
432 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
433 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
434 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
435 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
436 inconsistent states.
437
438 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
439 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
440 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
441 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
442 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
443 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
444 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
445 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
446 power.
447
448 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
449 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
450
451 %define parse.lac full
452
453 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
454 details including a few caveats.
455
456 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
457 stabilize it.
458
459** %define improvements:
460
461*** Can now be invoked via the command line:
462
463 Each of these command-line options
464
465 -D NAME[=VALUE]
466 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
467
468 -F NAME[=VALUE]
469 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
470
471 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
472
473 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
474
475 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
476 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
477 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
478 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
479
480*** Variables renamed:
481
482 The following %define variables
483
484 api.push_pull
485 lr.keep_unreachable_states
486
487 have been renamed to
488
489 api.push-pull
490 lr.keep-unreachable-states
491
492 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
493 for backward compatibility.
494
495*** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
496
497 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
498 within quotations marks. For example,
499
500 %define api.push-pull "push"
501
502 can be rewritten as
503
504 %define api.push-pull push
505
506*** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
507
508*** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
509
510** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
511
512** Character literals not of length one:
513
514 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
515 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
516 the following grammar to be the same token:
517
518 exp: exp '++'
519 | exp '+' exp
520 ;
521
522 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
523 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
524
525** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
526
527 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
528 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
529 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
530 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
531
532** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
533
534 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
535 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
536 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
537 and "last" members, instead of
538
539 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
540 do \
541 if (N) \
542 { \
543 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
544 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
545 } \
546 else \
547 { \
548 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
549 } \
550 while (false)
551
552 use:
553
554 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
555 do \
556 if (N) \
557 { \
558 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
559 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
560 } \
561 else \
562 { \
563 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
564 } \
565 while (false)
566
567** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
568
569 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
570 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
571 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
572 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
573
574** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
575
576 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
577 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
578 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
579 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
580 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
581 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
582 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
583 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
584
585** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
586
587 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
588 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
589 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
590 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
591
592 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
593
594 instead of
595
596 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
597
598 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
599 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
600 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
601 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
602 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
603 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
604 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
605
606** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
607
608 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
609 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
610 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
611 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
612 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
613
614*** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
615 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
616 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
617 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
618 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
619 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
620 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
621 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
622 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
623 shifted or discarded.
624
625*** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
626 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
627 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
628 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
629
630*** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
631 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
632 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
633 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
634 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
635 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
636 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
637 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
638 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
639 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
640 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
641 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
642 by default.
643
644** Java skeleton fixes:
645
646*** A location handling bug has been fixed.
647
648*** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
649 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
650
651*** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
652
653** -W/--warnings fixes:
654
655*** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
656
657 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
658 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
659
660 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
661
662*** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
663
664 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
665 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
666 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
667 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
668 example:
669
670 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
671 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
672 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
673 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
674
675 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
676 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
677 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
678 then have no effect on the conflict report.
679
680*** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
681
682 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
683 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
684
685 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
686
687*** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
688
689 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
690 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
691 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
692 suppress all warnings:
693
694 bison -Wnone gram.y
695
696** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
697
698 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
699 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
700 produced an assertion failure. For example:
701
702 %left END 0
703
704 This bug has been fixed.
705
706* Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
707
708** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
709 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
710
711** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
712 been fixed.
713
714** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
715
716** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
717 been fixed.
718
719** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
720 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
721 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
722 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
723
724** Minor documentation fixes.
725
726* Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
727
728** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
729 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
730 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
731 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
732 affected platforms.
733
734** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
735
736 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
737 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
738 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
739 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
740 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
741 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
742 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
743 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
744 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
745
746** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
747
748** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
749 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
750 avoided.
751
752** %code is now a permanent feature.
753
754 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
755
756 %{CODE%}
757
758 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
759 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
760
761 %code {CODE}
762 %code requires {CODE}
763 %code provides {CODE}
764 %code top {CODE}
765
766 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
767 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
768 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
769 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
770 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
771
772 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
773 is still considered experimental.
774
775** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
776
777 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
778 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
779 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
780 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
781 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
782 specified by POSIX.
783
784 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
785 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
786 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
787 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
788 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
789 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
790 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
791
792 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
793
794 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
795 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
796 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
797 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
798 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
799 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
800 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
801 be removed altogether.
802
803 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
804 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
805 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
806 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
807 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
808 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
809 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
810 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
811 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
812 2.4.2 is not necessary.
813
814** Internationalization.
815
816 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
817 message translations were not installed although supported by the
818 host system.
819
820* Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
821
822** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
823 declarations have been fixed.
824
825** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
826
827 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
828 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
829
830 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
831
832 instead of
833
834 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
835
836 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
837 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
838 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
839 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
840 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
841 feature.
842
843** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
844
845* Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
846
847** %language is an experimental feature.
848
849 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
850 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
851 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
852 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
853 in future releases.
854
855** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
856
857** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
858 fixed.
859
860* Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
861
862** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
863 are now deprecated:
864
865 %define NAME "VALUE"
866
867** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
868
869 %define api.pure
870
871 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
872 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
873
874** Push Parsing
875
876 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
877 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
878 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
879 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
880 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
881
882 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
883 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
884
885 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
886
887 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
888 feedback will help to stabilize it.
889
890** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
891 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
892 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
893
894** Java
895
896 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
897 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
898 %skeleton to select it.
899
900 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
901
902 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
903 feedback will help to stabilize it.
904
905** %language
906
907 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
908 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
909 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
910 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
911
912** XML Automaton Report
913
914 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
915 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
916 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
917
918** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
919 %defines. For example:
920
921 %defines "parser.h"
922
923** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
924 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
925 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
926 instead of "unused".
927
928** Unreachable State Removal
929
930 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
931 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
932 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
933
934 1. Removes unreachable states.
935
936 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
937 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
938 directives in existing grammar files.
939
940 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
941 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
942
943 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
944
945 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
946
947 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
948 for further discussion.
949
950** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
951
952 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
953 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
954 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
955 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
956 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
957 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
958 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
959 code.
960
961** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
962 name.
963
964** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
965 deprecated:
966
967 %file-prefix "parser"
968 %name-prefix "c_"
969 %output "parser.c"
970
971** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
972
973 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
974 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
975 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
976 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
977 it:
978
979 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
980 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
981 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
982 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
983
984 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
985 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
986 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
987 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
988
989 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
990 determine whether they should become permanent features.
991
992** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
993
994 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
995 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
996 about unused $2 in:
997
998 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
999
1000 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1001 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1002
1003 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1004
1005 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1006 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1007 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1008
1009 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1010 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1011
1012** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1013
1014 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1015 %printer's:
1016
1017 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1018 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1019 declared semantic type tags.
1020
1021 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1022 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1023 type tags.
1024
1025 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1026 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1027 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1028 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1029
1030 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1031 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1032 features.
1033
1034 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1035 details.
1036
1037** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1038 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1039 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1040
1041** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1042 completely removed from Bison.
1043
1044* Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1045
1046** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1047 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1048 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1049 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1050 and is required by POSIX.
1051
1052** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1053 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1054
1055** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1056
1057 For example:
1058
1059 %union { char *string; }
1060 %token <string> STRING1
1061 %token <string> STRING2
1062 %type <string> string1
1063 %type <string> string2
1064 %union { char character; }
1065 %token <character> CHR
1066 %type <character> chr
1067 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1068 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1069 %destructor { } <character>
1070
1071 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1072 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1073 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1074 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1075 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1076
1077 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1078 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1079 future versions.]
1080
1081** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1082 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1083 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1084 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1085 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1086
1087** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1088 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1089
1090 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1091 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1092 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1093 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1094 declared after the first %union.
1095
1096 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1097 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1098 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1099 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1100 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1101 after the token definitions.
1102
1103 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1104 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1105
1106** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1107 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1108 %after-header.
1109
1110 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1111 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1112 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1113 convenient for you:
1114
1115 %before-header {
1116 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1117 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1118 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1119 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1120 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1121 }
1122 %start-header {
1123 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1124 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1125 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1126 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1127 }
1128 %union {
1129 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1130 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1131 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1132 }
1133 %end-header {
1134 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1135 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1136 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1137 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1138 * definitions. */
1139 }
1140 %after-header {
1141 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1142 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1143 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1144 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1145 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1146 }
1147
1148 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1149 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1150
1151 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1152 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1153
1154** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1155 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1156 in a future release.
1157
1158* Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1159
1160** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1161 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1162
1163** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1164 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1165
1166* Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1167
1168** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1169 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1170 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1171
1172** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1173
1174** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1175
1176** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1177 their contents together.
1178
1179** New warning: unused values
1180 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1181 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1182
1183 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1184 | exp "+" exp
1185 ;
1186
1187 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1188 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1189 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1190
1191 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1192 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1193 | exp "+" exp
1194 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1195 ;
1196
1197 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1198 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1199 values are used, e.g.:
1200
1201 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1202 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1203 ;
1204
1205 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1206 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1207
1208 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1209
1210 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1211 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1212
1213** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1214 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1215 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1216 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1217
1218** %expect, %expect-rr
1219 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1220 instead of warnings.
1221
1222** GLR, YACC parsers.
1223 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1224 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1225
1226** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1227
1228** %require "VERSION"
1229 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1230 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1231
1232** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1233 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1234 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1235 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1236 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1237
1238 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1239 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1240 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1241 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1242
1243 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1244 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1245
1246** DJGPP support added.
1247\f
1248* Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1249
1250** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1251
1252** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1253 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1254 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1255 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1256 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1257 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1258
1259** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1260 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1261 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1262 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1263
1264** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1265 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1266 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1267
1268** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1269 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1270 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1271 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1272 unexpected "number"'.
1273\f
1274* Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1275
1276** Possibly-incompatible changes
1277
1278 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1279 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1280 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1281 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1282 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1283
1284 - Error token location.
1285 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1286 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1287 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1288 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1289
1290 - Semicolon changes:
1291 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1292 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1293
1294 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1295 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1296 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1297 forget a closing quote.
1298
1299 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1300
1301** New features
1302
1303 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1304
1305 - New directive: %initial-action.
1306 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1307 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1308
1309 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1310 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1311
1312 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1313 This is a GNU extension.
1314
1315 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1316 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1317
1318 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1319
1320 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1321 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1322
1323** Bug fixes
1324
1325 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1326 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1327 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1328 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1329 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1330 these violations will become errors again.
1331
1332 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1333 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1334
1335 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1336\f
1337* Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1338
1339** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1340 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1341
1342** syntax error processing
1343
1344 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1345 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1346
1347 - %destructor
1348 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1349 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1350
1351 - %error-verbose
1352 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1353
1354 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1355 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1356
1357** POSIX conformance
1358
1359 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1360 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1361 compatibility with Yacc.
1362
1363 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1364 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1365 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1366 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1367 be consistent.
1368
1369 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1370 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1371
1372 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1373 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1374
1375 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1376 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1377
1378 - Yacc command and library now available
1379 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1380 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1381 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1382 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1383
1384 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1385
1386 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1387 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1388 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1389
1390** Other compatibility issues
1391
1392 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1393 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1394 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1395 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1396 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1397 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1398
1399 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1400 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1401
1402 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1403 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1404
1405 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1406 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1407 withdrawn in a future release.
1408
1409** GLR parser notes
1410
1411 - GLR and inline
1412 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1413 C keyword "inline".
1414
1415 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1416 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1417
1418** %parse-param and %lex-param
1419 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1420 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1421 shortcomings:
1422
1423 - a single argument only can be added,
1424 - their types are weak (void *),
1425 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1426 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1427
1428 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1429 For instance:
1430
1431 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1432 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1433 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1434
1435 results in the following signatures:
1436
1437 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1438 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1439
1440 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1441
1442 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1443 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1444
1445** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1446 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1447 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1448
1449** #line in output files
1450 - --no-line works properly.
1451
1452** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1453 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1454 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1455 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1456\f
1457* Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1458
1459** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1460
1461** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1462
1463** GLR parsers
1464 Fix spurious parse errors.
1465
1466** Pure parsers
1467 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1468 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1469
1470** Type Clashes
1471 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1472 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1473
1474 untyped: ... typed;
1475
1476 but the converse remains an error:
1477
1478 typed: ... untyped;
1479
1480** Values of mid-rule actions
1481 The following code:
1482
1483 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1484
1485 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1486 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1487\f
1488* Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1489
1490** GLR parsing
1491 The declaration
1492 %glr-parser
1493 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1494 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1495 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1496 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1497
1498 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1499 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1500
1501** Output Directory
1502 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1503 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1504 now creates "bar.c".
1505
1506** Undefined token
1507 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1508 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1509
1510** Unknown token numbers
1511 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1512 no longer the case.
1513
1514** Error token
1515 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1516 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1517 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1518 will be mapped onto another number.
1519
1520** Verbose error messages
1521 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1522 error recovery is possible.
1523
1524** End token
1525 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1526
1527** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1528 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1529 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1530 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1531 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1532 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1533 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1534 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1535 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1536
1537** Traces
1538 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1539
1540** Larger grammars
1541 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1542 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1543 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1544 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1545
1546** Explicit initial rule
1547 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1548 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1549 graphs as rule 0.
1550
1551** Useless rules
1552 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1553 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1554
1555** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1556 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1557
1558** Rules never reduced
1559 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1560 reported.
1561
1562** Incorrect "Token not used"
1563 On a grammar such as
1564
1565 %token useless useful
1566 %%
1567 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1568
1569 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1570 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1571
1572** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1573 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1574
1575** Default locations
1576 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1577 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1578 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1579 the computation of @$.
1580
1581** Token end-of-file
1582 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1583 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1584 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1585 For instance
1586 %token MYEOF 0
1587 or
1588 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1589
1590** Semantic parser
1591 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1592
1593** New translations
1594 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1595 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1596
1597** Incorrect token definitions
1598 When given
1599 %token 'a' "A"
1600 bison used to output
1601 #define 'a' 65
1602
1603** Token definitions as enums
1604 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1605 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1606 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1607
1608** Reports
1609 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1610 produces additional information:
1611 - itemset
1612 complete the core item sets with their closure
1613 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1614 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1615 - solved
1616 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1617 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1618 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1619
1620** Type clashes
1621 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1622 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1623
1624 %type <foo> bar
1625 %%
1626 bar: '0' {} '0';
1627
1628 This is fixed.
1629
1630** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1631\f
1632* Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1633
1634** C Skeleton
1635 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1636 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1637 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1638
1639 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1640 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1641 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1642 kludge will be disabled.
1643
1644 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1645 extended.
1646\f
1647* Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1648
1649** File name clashes are detected
1650 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1651 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1652
1653** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1654 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1655 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1656 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1657 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1658 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1659
1660** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1661 many portability hassles.
1662
1663** DJGPP support added.
1664
1665** Fix test suite portability problems.
1666\f
1667* Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1668
1669** Fix C++ issues
1670 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1671 under some conditions.
1672
1673** Catch invalid @n
1674 As is done with $n.
1675\f
1676* Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1677
1678** Fix Yacc output file names
1679
1680** Portability fixes
1681
1682** Italian, Dutch translations
1683\f
1684* Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1685
1686** Many Bug Fixes
1687
1688** GNU Gettext and %expect
1689 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1690 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1691 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1692 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
1693
1694** Use of alloca in parsers
1695 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1696 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1697
1698 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1699 problems as on AIX.
1700
1701** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1702
1703** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1704 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1705
1706** User Actions
1707 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1708 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1709 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1710
1711** Better C++ compliance
1712 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1713 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1714
1715** Reduced Grammars
1716 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1717
1718** 64 bit hosts
1719 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1720
1721** Error messages
1722 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1723
1724** %expect
1725 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1726 any warning.
1727
1728** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1729
1730** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1731
1732** Swedish translation
1733
1734** Parse errors
1735 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1736 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1737 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1738
1739** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1740 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1741 previous allocations were not freed.
1742
1743** Fixed verbose output file.
1744 Some newlines were missing.
1745 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1746
1747** Fixed conflict report.
1748 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1749
1750** %expect
1751 Was not used.
1752 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1753
1754** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1755
1756** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1757
1758** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1759
1760** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1761 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1762
1763** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1764
1765** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1766 New.
1767
1768** --output
1769 New, aliasing "--output-file".
1770\f
1771* Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1772
1773** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
1774 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
1775 argument.
1776
1777** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
1778 experiment.
1779
1780** Portability fixes.
1781\f
1782* Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1783
1784** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1785 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1786 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1787 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1788
1789** Added "-g" and "--graph".
1790
1791** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1792
1793** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
1794
1795** Russian translation added.
1796
1797** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
1798
1799** Added the old Bison reference card.
1800
1801** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
1802
1803** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
1804
1805** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
1806
1807** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
1808 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
1809
1810** New directives.
1811 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
1812 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
1813
1814** @$
1815 Automatic location tracking.
1816\f
1817* Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
1818
1819** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
1820
1821** Added NLS.
1822
1823** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
1824
1825** There is now a FAQ.
1826\f
1827* Changes in version 1.27:
1828
1829** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
1830 some systems has been fixed.
1831\f
1832* Changes in version 1.26:
1833
1834** Bison now uses Automake.
1835
1836** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
1837
1838** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
1839
1840** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
1841
1842** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
1843
1844** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
1845
1846** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
1847 not provide alloca().
1848\f
1849* Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
1850
1851** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
1852the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
1853
1854** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
1855example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
1856of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
1857
1858** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
1859and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
1860table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
1861purposes.
1862
1863** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
1864directives in the parser file.
1865
1866** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
1867Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
1868
1869** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
1870the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
1871The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
1872a switch statement body.
1873\f
1874* Changes in version 1.23:
1875
1876The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
1877passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
1878actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
1879by casting it to the proper pointer type.
1880
1881Line numbers in output file corrected.
1882\f
1883* Changes in version 1.22:
1884
1885--help option added.
1886\f
1887* Changes in version 1.20:
1888
1889Output file does not redefine const for C++.
1890
1891-----
1892
1893Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1894
1895This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
1896
1897This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1898it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1899the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1900(at your option) any later version.
1901
1902This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1903but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1904MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1905GNU General Public License for more details.
1906
1907You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1908along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1909
1910 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
1911 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
1912 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
1913 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
1914 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
1915 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
1916 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
1917 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
1918 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
1919 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
1920 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
1921 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
1922 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
1923 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
1924 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
1925 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
1926 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
1927 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp calc yyo fval
1928
1929Local Variables:
1930mode: outline
1931fill-column: 76
1932End: