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