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