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