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