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1 GNU Bison NEWS
2
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
6
7 Bison will stop adding a semicolon at the end of the actions (as announced
8 in the release 2.5):
9
10 foo.y:2.22: warning: a ';' might be needed at the end of action code
11 exp: "num" { $$ = $1 }
12 ^
13 foo.y:2.22: future versions of Bison will not add the ';'
14
15 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
16 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
17 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
18
19 ** Backward incompatible changes
20
21 *** Obsolete features
22
23 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
24
25 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
26 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
27
28 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
29 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
30
31 ** Bug fixes
32
33 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
34
35 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
36 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
37 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
38 preprocessor expansion:
39
40 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
41
42 This is has been fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
43 identifiers for user-provided variables.
44
45 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
46
47 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
48 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
49
50 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
51
52 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
53 Santet.
54
55 *** Carets
56
57 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
58 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
59 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
60
61 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
62 the caret information only. For instance on:
63
64 %%
65 exp: 'a' | 'a';
66
67 Bison 2.7 reports:
68
69 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
70 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
71
72 Now bison reports:
73
74 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
75 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
76 exp: 'a' | 'a';
77 ^^^
78
79 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
80
81 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
82 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
83
84 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
85
86 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
87 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
88 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
89
90 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
91 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
92 errors (and only those):
93
94 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
95
96 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
97 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
98
99 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
100
101 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
102
103 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
104 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
105
106 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
107 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
108 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
109
110 *** The display of warnings is now richer
111
112 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
113
114 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
115
116 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
117 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
118 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
119
120 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
121 with failure):
122
123 bison: warnings being treated as errors
124 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
125
126 it now reports:
127
128 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
129
130 *** Deprecated constructs
131
132 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
133 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
134 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
135
136 *** Useless semantic types
137
138 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
139 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
140 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
141 types that trigger the warning:
142
143 %token <type1> term
144 %type <type2> nterm
145 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
146 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
147 %%
148 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
149
150 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
151 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
152
153 *** Undefined but unused symbols
154
155 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
156 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
157
158 %printer {} symbol1
159 %destructor {} symbol2
160 %type <type> symbol3
161 %%
162 exp: "a";
163
164 *** Useless destructors or printers
165
166 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
167 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
168 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
169 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
170
171 %token <type1> token1
172 <type2> token2
173 <type3> token3
174 <type4> token4
175 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
176 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
177
178 *** Conflicts
179
180 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
181 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
182
183 %glr-parser
184 %%
185 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
186
187 compare the previous version of bison:
188
189 $ bison foo.y
190 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
191 $ bison -Werror foo.y
192 bison: warnings being treated as errors
193 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
194
195 with the new behavior:
196
197 $ bison foo.y
198 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
199 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
200 $ bison -Werror foo.y
201 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
202 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
203
204 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
205
206 %expect 0
207 %glr-parser
208 %%
209 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
210
211 Former behavior:
212
213 $ bison bar.y
214 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
215 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
216 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
217
218 New one:
219
220 $ bison bar.y
221 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
222 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
223
224 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
225
226 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
227 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
228 or more arguments. Instead of
229
230 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
231 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
232 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
233 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
234
235 one may now declare
236
237 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
238
239 ** Variable api.token.prefix
240
241 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
242 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
243 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
244
245 %token FILE for ERROR
246 %define api.token.prefix "TOK_"
247 %%
248 start: FILE for ERROR;
249
250 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
251 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
252 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
253 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
254
255 ** Variable parse.error
256
257 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
258 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
259 verbose".
260
261 ** Renamed %define variables
262
263 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
264 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
265
266 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
267 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
268 namespace -> api.namespace
269 stype -> api.value.type
270
271 ** Semantic predicates
272
273 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
274
275 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
276 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
277 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
278 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
279 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
280 expressions.
281
282 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
283
284 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
285 reduce/reduce conflicts.
286
287 ** Token numbering has changed to preserve the user-defined order
288
289 When declaring %token A B, the numbering for A is inferior to B. Up to now,
290 when declaring associativity at the same time, with %left (or %right,
291 %precedence, %nonassoc), B was inferior to A.
292
293 ** Useless precedence and associativity
294
295 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
296
297 When developping and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
298 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
299 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
300 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
301 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
302 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
303 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
304
305 *** Precedence warning category
306
307 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
308 useless precedence and associativity directives.
309
310 *** Useless associativity
311
312 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
313 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
314 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
315 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
316 For example:
317
318 %left '+'
319 %left '*'
320 %%
321 exp:
322 "num"
323 | exp '+' "num"
324 | exp '*' exp
325 ;
326
327 will produce a
328
329 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
330 %left '+'
331 ^^^
332
333 *** Useless precedence
334
335 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
336 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
337 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
338 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
339
340 %precedence '='
341 %%
342 exp: "var" '=' "num";
343
344 will produce a
345
346 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
347 %precedence '='
348 ^^^
349
350 *** Useless precedence and associativity
351
352 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
353 as follows:
354
355 %nonassoc '='
356 %%
357 exp: "var" '=' "num";
358
359 The warning is:
360
361 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
362 %nonassoc '='
363 ^^^
364
365 ** Empty rules
366
367 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
368 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
369 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
370 %empty. On the following grammar:
371
372 %%
373 s: a b c;
374 a: ;
375 b: %empty;
376 c: 'a' %empty;
377
378 bison reports:
379
380 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
381 a: {}
382 ^^
383 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
384 c: 'a' %empty {};
385 ^^^^^^
386
387 ** Java skeleton improvements
388
389 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
390
391 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
392 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
393 and "%define init_throws".
394
395 ** C++ skeletons improvements
396
397 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
398
399 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
400 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
401 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
402
403 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
404
405 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
406
407 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
408
409 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
410 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
411 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
412 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
413 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
414 factory invoked by the user actions).
415
416 *** %define api.value.type variant
417
418 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
419 from Théophile Ranquet.
420
421 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
422 instance:
423
424 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
425 %token <int> NUMBER;
426 %token SEMICOLON ";"
427 %type <::std::string> item;
428 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
429 %%
430 result:
431 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
432 ;
433
434 list:
435 /* nothing */ { /* Generates an empty string list */ }
436 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
437 ;
438
439 item:
440 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
441 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
442 ;
443
444 *** %define api.token.constructor
445
446 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
447 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
448 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
449
450 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
451 {
452 parser::location_type loc = ...;
453 ...
454 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
455 ...
456 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
457 ...
458 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
459 ...
460 }
461
462 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
463
464 ** Bug fixes
465
466 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
467
468 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
469
470 ** Diagnostics are improved
471
472 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
473
474 *** Changes in the format of error messages
475
476 This used to be the format of many error reports:
477
478 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
479 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
480
481 It is now:
482
483 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
484 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
485
486 *** New format for error reports: carets
487
488 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
489
490 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
491 %type <sval> exp
492 ^^^^^^
493 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
494 %type <ival> exp
495 ^^^^^^
496
497 or
498
499 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
500 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
501 ^^^^
502 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
503 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
504 ^^^
505 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
506 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
507 ^^^
508 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
509 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
510 ^^^
511
512 The default behaviour for now is still not to display these unless
513 explictly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
514 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
515 -fno-caret).
516
517 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
518
519 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
520 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
521 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
522 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
523 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
524 parsers).
525
526 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
527 "%define api.pure full".
528
529 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
530
531 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
532 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
533 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
534 then responsible to define her type.
535
536 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
537 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
538 them.
539
540 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
541 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
542 compatibility).
543
544 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
545 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
546 api.position.type.
547
548 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
549
550 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
551 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
552 before re-throwing the exception.
553
554 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
555 appreciated.
556
557 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
558
559 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
560
561 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
562 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
563 numbered and left-justified.
564
565 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
566 diamond shaped nodes.
567
568 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
569 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
570
571 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
572
573 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
574 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
575
576 ** Documentation
577
578 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
579 have been fixed and extended.
580
581 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
582 were not properly documented.
583
584 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
585
586 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
587
588 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
589 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
590 reporting them to us.
591
592 ** Bug fixes
593
594 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
595 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
596 3.2.
597
598 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
599
600 Nul characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
601
602 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
603 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
604
605 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
606
607 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
608
609 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
610
611 ** Bug fixes
612
613 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
614
615 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
616 users to the appropriate place to report them.
617
618 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
619
620 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
621 generated, are removed.
622
623 All the generated headers are self-contained.
624
625 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
626
627 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
628 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
629 For instance the header generated from
630
631 %define api.prefix "calc"
632 %defines "lib/parse.h"
633
634 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
635
636 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
637
638 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
639 warnings such as:
640
641 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
642 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
643 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
644 *++yyvsp = yylval;
645 ^
646
647 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
648
649 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
650 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
651 addressed.
652
653 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
654
655 ** Bug fixes
656
657 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
658 suite have been fixed.
659
660 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
661
662 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
663 invalid C++. This is fixed.
664
665 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
666
667 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
668
669 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
670
671 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
672
673 ** Future Changes
674
675 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
676 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
677 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
678
679 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
680
681 write:
682
683 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
684
685 ** Bug fixes
686
687 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
688
689 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
690
691 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
692
693 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
694 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
695 now does.
696
697 ** Type names in actions
698
699 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
700 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
701
702 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
703
704 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
705 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
706
707 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
708
709 ** Future changes
710
711 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
712 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
713
714 *** K&R C parsers
715
716 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
717 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
718 compilers.
719
720 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
721
722 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
723 YYLTYPE.
724
725 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
726 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
727
728 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
729 %error-verbose.
730
731 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
732
733 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
734 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
735 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
736 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
737 it.
738
739 ** Generated Parser Headers
740
741 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
742
743 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
744 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
745
746 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
747 # define YY_FOO_H
748 ...
749 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
750
751 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
752
753 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
754 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
755
756 int bar_parse (void);
757
758 rather than
759
760 #define yyparse bar_parse
761 int yyparse (void);
762
763 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
764 single compilation unit.
765
766 *** Exported symbols in C++
767
768 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
769 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
770 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
771
772 *** YYLSP_NEEDED
773
774 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
775 longer defined.
776
777 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
778
779 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
780 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
781 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
782 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
783 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
784 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
785 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
786
787 The following examples compares both:
788
789 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
790 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
791 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
792 %% %%
793 exp: 'a'; exp: 'a';
794
795 bison generates:
796
797 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
798 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
799
800 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
801 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
802 > # if defined YYDEBUG
803 > # if YYDEBUG
804 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
805 > # else
806 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
807 > # endif
808 > # else
809 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
810 > # endif
811 # endif | # endif
812
813 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
814 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
815 # endif # endif
816
817 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
818 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
819 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
820 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
821 FOO = 258 FOO = 258
822 }; };
823 # endif # endif
824
825 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
826 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
827 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
828 { {
829 int ival; int ival;
830 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
831 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
832 #endif #endif
833
834 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
835
836 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
837
838 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
839
840 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
841
842 ** Future changes:
843
844 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
845
846 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
847
848 ** glr.c improvements:
849
850 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
851
852 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
853 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
854
855 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
856
857 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
858 when -std is passed to GCC).
859
860 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
861
862 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
863 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
864
865 ** Changes for C++:
866
867 *** C++11 compatibility:
868
869 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
870 or higher.
871
872 *** Header guards
873
874 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
875 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
876
877 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
878 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
879 ...
880 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
881
882 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
883 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
884 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
885
886 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
887
888 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
889 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
890 ...
891 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
892
893 *** C++ locations:
894
895 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
896 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
897 documentation were fixed.
898
899 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
900
901 ** Changes in the manual:
902
903 *** %printer is documented
904
905 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
906 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
907
908 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
909 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
910
911 *** Several improvements have been made:
912
913 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
914 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
915 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
916 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
917
918 ** Building bison:
919
920 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
921
922 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
923 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
924
925 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
926
927 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
928
929 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
930 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
931
932 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
933
934 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
935 halts in the middle of its course.
936
937 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
938
939 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
940
941 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
942 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
943 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
944 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
945 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
946
947 ** Named references:
948
949 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
950 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
951 actions code.
952
953 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
954 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
955 as named references:
956
957 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
958 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
959
960 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
961
962 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
963 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
964
965 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
966 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
967 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
968
969 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
970 will help to stabilize them.
971 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
972
973 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
974
975 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
976 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
977 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
978 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
979 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
980 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
981 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
982 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
983 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
984
985 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
986 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
987 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
988 file with these directives:
989
990 %define lr.type lalr
991 %define lr.type ielr
992 %define lr.type canonical-lr
993
994 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
995 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
996 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
997 manual.
998
999 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1000 stabilize them.
1001
1002 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
1003
1004 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
1005
1006 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
1007 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
1008 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
1009 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
1010 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
1011 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
1012 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
1013 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
1014 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
1015 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
1016 tokens.
1017
1018 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
1019 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
1020 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
1021 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
1022 inconsistent states.
1023
1024 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
1025 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
1026 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
1027 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
1028 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
1029 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
1030 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
1031 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
1032 power.
1033
1034 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
1035 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
1036
1037 %define parse.lac full
1038
1039 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
1040 details including a few caveats.
1041
1042 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
1043 stabilize it.
1044
1045 ** %define improvements:
1046
1047 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
1048
1049 Each of these command-line options
1050
1051 -D NAME[=VALUE]
1052 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
1053
1054 -F NAME[=VALUE]
1055 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
1056
1057 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
1058
1059 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
1060
1061 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
1062 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
1063 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
1064 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
1065
1066 *** Variables renamed:
1067
1068 The following %define variables
1069
1070 api.push_pull
1071 lr.keep_unreachable_states
1072
1073 have been renamed to
1074
1075 api.push-pull
1076 lr.keep-unreachable-states
1077
1078 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
1079 for backward compatibility.
1080
1081 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
1082
1083 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
1084 within quotations marks. For example,
1085
1086 %define api.push-pull "push"
1087
1088 can be rewritten as
1089
1090 %define api.push-pull push
1091
1092 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1093
1094 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1095
1096 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1097
1098 ** Character literals not of length one:
1099
1100 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1101 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1102 the following grammar to be the same token:
1103
1104 exp: exp '++'
1105 | exp '+' exp
1106 ;
1107
1108 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1109 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1110
1111 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1112
1113 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1114 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1115 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1116 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1117
1118 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1119
1120 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1121 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1122 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1123 and "last" members, instead of
1124
1125 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1126 do \
1127 if (N) \
1128 { \
1129 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1130 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1131 } \
1132 else \
1133 { \
1134 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1135 } \
1136 while (false)
1137
1138 use:
1139
1140 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1141 do \
1142 if (N) \
1143 { \
1144 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1145 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1146 } \
1147 else \
1148 { \
1149 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1150 } \
1151 while (false)
1152
1153 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1154
1155 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1156 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1157 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1158 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1159
1160 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1161
1162 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1163 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1164 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1165 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1166 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1167 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1168 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1169 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1170
1171 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1172
1173 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1174 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1175 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1176 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1177
1178 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1179
1180 instead of
1181
1182 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1183
1184 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1185 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1186 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1187 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1188 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1189 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1190 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1191
1192 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1193
1194 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1195 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1196 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1197 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1198 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1199
1200 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1201 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1202 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1203 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1204 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1205 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1206 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1207 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1208 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1209 shifted or discarded.
1210
1211 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1212 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1213 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1214 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1215
1216 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1217 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1218 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1219 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1220 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1221 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1222 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1223 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1224 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1225 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1226 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1227 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1228 by default.
1229
1230 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1231
1232 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1233
1234 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1235 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1236
1237 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1238
1239 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1240
1241 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1242
1243 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1244 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1245
1246 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1247
1248 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1249
1250 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1251 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1252 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1253 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1254 example:
1255
1256 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1257 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1258 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1259 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1260
1261 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1262 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1263 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1264 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1265
1266 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1267
1268 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1269 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1270
1271 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1272
1273 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1274
1275 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1276 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1277 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1278 suppress all warnings:
1279
1280 bison -Wnone gram.y
1281
1282 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1283
1284 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1285 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1286 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1287
1288 %left END 0
1289
1290 This bug has been fixed.
1291
1292 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1293
1294 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1295 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1296
1297 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1298 been fixed.
1299
1300 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1301
1302 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1303 been fixed.
1304
1305 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1306 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1307 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1308 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1309
1310 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1311
1312 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1313
1314 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1315 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1316 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1317 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1318 affected platforms.
1319
1320 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1321
1322 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1323 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1324 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1325 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1326 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1327 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1328 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1329 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1330 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1331
1332 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1333
1334 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1335 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1336 avoided.
1337
1338 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1339
1340 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1341
1342 %{CODE%}
1343
1344 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1345 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1346
1347 %code {CODE}
1348 %code requires {CODE}
1349 %code provides {CODE}
1350 %code top {CODE}
1351
1352 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1353 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1354 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1355 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1356 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1357
1358 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1359 is still considered experimental.
1360
1361 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1362
1363 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1364 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1365 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1366 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1367 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1368 specified by POSIX.
1369
1370 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1371 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1372 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1373 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1374 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1375 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1376 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1377
1378 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1379
1380 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1381 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1382 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1383 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1384 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1385 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1386 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1387 be removed altogether.
1388
1389 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1390 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1391 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1392 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1393 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1394 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1395 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1396 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1397 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1398 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1399
1400 ** Internationalization.
1401
1402 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1403 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1404 host system.
1405
1406 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1407
1408 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1409 declarations have been fixed.
1410
1411 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1412
1413 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1414 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1415
1416 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1417
1418 instead of
1419
1420 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1421
1422 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1423 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1424 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1425 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1426 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1427 feature.
1428
1429 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1430
1431 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1432
1433 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1434
1435 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1436 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1437 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1438 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1439 in future releases.
1440
1441 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1442
1443 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1444 fixed.
1445
1446 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1447
1448 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1449 are now deprecated:
1450
1451 %define NAME "VALUE"
1452
1453 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1454
1455 %define api.pure
1456
1457 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1458 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1459
1460 ** Push Parsing
1461
1462 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1463 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1464 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1465 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1466 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1467
1468 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1469 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1470
1471 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1472
1473 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1474 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1475
1476 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1477 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1478 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1479
1480 ** Java
1481
1482 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1483 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1484 %skeleton to select it.
1485
1486 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1487
1488 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1489 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1490 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1491
1492 ** %language
1493
1494 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1495 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1496 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1497 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1498
1499 ** XML Automaton Report
1500
1501 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1502 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1503 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1504 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1505
1506 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1507 %defines. For example:
1508
1509 %defines "parser.h"
1510
1511 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1512 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1513 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1514 instead of "unused".
1515
1516 ** Unreachable State Removal
1517
1518 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1519 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1520 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1521
1522 1. Removes unreachable states.
1523
1524 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1525 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1526 directives in existing grammar files.
1527
1528 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1529 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1530
1531 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1532
1533 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1534
1535 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1536 for further discussion.
1537
1538 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1539
1540 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1541 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1542 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1543 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1544 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1545 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1546 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1547 code.
1548
1549 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1550 name.
1551
1552 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1553 deprecated:
1554
1555 %file-prefix "parser"
1556 %name-prefix "c_"
1557 %output "parser.c"
1558
1559 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1560
1561 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1562 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1563 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1564 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1565 it:
1566
1567 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1568 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1569 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1570 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1571
1572 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1573 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1574 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1575 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1576
1577 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1578 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1579
1580 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1581
1582 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1583 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1584 about unused $2 in:
1585
1586 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1587
1588 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1589 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1590
1591 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1592
1593 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1594 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1595 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1596
1597 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1598 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1599
1600 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1601
1602 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1603 %printer's:
1604
1605 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1606 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1607 declared semantic type tags.
1608
1609 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1610 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1611 type tags.
1612
1613 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1614 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1615 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1616 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1617
1618 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1619 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1620 features.
1621
1622 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1623 details.
1624
1625 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1626 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1627 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1628
1629 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1630 completely removed from Bison.
1631
1632 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1633
1634 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1635 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1636 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1637 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1638 and is required by POSIX.
1639
1640 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1641 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1642
1643 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1644
1645 For example:
1646
1647 %union { char *string; }
1648 %token <string> STRING1
1649 %token <string> STRING2
1650 %type <string> string1
1651 %type <string> string2
1652 %union { char character; }
1653 %token <character> CHR
1654 %type <character> chr
1655 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1656 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1657 %destructor { } <character>
1658
1659 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1660 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1661 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1662 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1663 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1664
1665 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1666 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1667 future versions.]
1668
1669 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1670 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1671 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1672 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1673 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1674
1675 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1676 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1677
1678 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1679 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1680 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1681 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1682 declared after the first %union.
1683
1684 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1685 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1686 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1687 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1688 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1689 after the token definitions.
1690
1691 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1692 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1693
1694 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1695 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1696 %after-header.
1697
1698 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1699 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1700 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1701 convenient for you:
1702
1703 %before-header {
1704 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1705 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1706 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1707 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1708 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1709 }
1710 %start-header {
1711 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1712 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1713 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1714 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1715 }
1716 %union {
1717 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1718 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1719 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1720 }
1721 %end-header {
1722 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1723 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1724 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1725 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1726 * definitions. */
1727 }
1728 %after-header {
1729 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1730 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1731 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1732 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1733 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1734 }
1735
1736 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1737 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1738
1739 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1740 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1741
1742 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1743 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1744 in a future release.
1745
1746 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1747
1748 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1749 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1750
1751 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1752 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1753
1754 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1755
1756 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1757 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1758 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1759
1760 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1761
1762 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1763
1764 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1765 their contents together.
1766
1767 ** New warning: unused values
1768 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1769 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1770
1771 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1772 | exp "+" exp
1773 ;
1774
1775 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1776 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1777 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1778
1779 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1780 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1781 | exp "+" exp
1782 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1783 ;
1784
1785 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1786 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1787 values are used, e.g.:
1788
1789 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1790 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1791 ;
1792
1793 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1794 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1795
1796 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1797
1798 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1799 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1800
1801 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1802 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1803 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1804 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1805
1806 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1807 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1808 instead of warnings.
1809
1810 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1811 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1812 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1813
1814 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1815
1816 ** %require "VERSION"
1817 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1818 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1819
1820 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1821 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1822 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1823 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1824 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1825
1826 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1827 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1828 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1829 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1830
1831 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1832 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1833
1834 ** DJGPP support added.
1835 \f
1836 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1837
1838 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1839
1840 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1841 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1842 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1843 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1844 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1845 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1846
1847 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1848 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1849 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1850 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1851
1852 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1853 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1854 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1855
1856 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1857 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1858 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1859 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1860 unexpected "number"'.
1861 \f
1862 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1863
1864 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1865
1866 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1867 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1868 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1869 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1870 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1871
1872 - Error token location.
1873 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1874 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1875 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1876 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1877
1878 - Semicolon changes:
1879 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1880 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1881
1882 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1883 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1884 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1885 forget a closing quote.
1886
1887 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1888
1889 ** New features
1890
1891 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1892
1893 - New directive: %initial-action.
1894 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1895 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1896
1897 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1898 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1899
1900 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1901 This is a GNU extension.
1902
1903 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1904 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1905
1906 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1907
1908 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1909 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1910
1911 ** Bug fixes
1912
1913 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1914 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1915 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1916 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1917 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1918 these violations will become errors again.
1919
1920 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1921 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1922
1923 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1924 \f
1925 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1926
1927 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1928 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1929
1930 ** syntax error processing
1931
1932 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1933 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1934
1935 - %destructor
1936 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1937 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1938
1939 - %error-verbose
1940 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1941
1942 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1943 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1944
1945 ** POSIX conformance
1946
1947 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1948 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1949 compatibility with Yacc.
1950
1951 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1952 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1953 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1954 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1955 be consistent.
1956
1957 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1958 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1959
1960 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1961 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1962
1963 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1964 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1965
1966 - Yacc command and library now available
1967 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1968 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1969 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1970 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1971
1972 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1973
1974 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1975 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1976 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1977
1978 ** Other compatibility issues
1979
1980 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1981 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1982 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1983 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1984 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1985 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1986
1987 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1988 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1989
1990 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1991 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1992
1993 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1994 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1995 withdrawn in a future release.
1996
1997 ** GLR parser notes
1998
1999 - GLR and inline
2000 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
2001 C keyword "inline".
2002
2003 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
2004 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
2005
2006 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
2007 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
2008 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
2009 shortcomings:
2010
2011 - a single argument only can be added,
2012 - their types are weak (void *),
2013 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
2014 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
2015
2016 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
2017 For instance:
2018
2019 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
2020 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
2021 %parse-param {int *randomness}
2022
2023 results in the following signatures:
2024
2025 int yylex (int *nastiness);
2026 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2027
2028 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
2029
2030 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
2031 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2032
2033 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
2034 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
2035 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
2036
2037 ** #line in output files
2038 - --no-line works properly.
2039
2040 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
2041 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
2042 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
2043 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
2044 \f
2045 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
2046
2047 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
2048
2049 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
2050
2051 ** GLR parsers
2052 Fix spurious parse errors.
2053
2054 ** Pure parsers
2055 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
2056 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
2057
2058 ** Type Clashes
2059 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
2060 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
2061
2062 untyped: ... typed;
2063
2064 but the converse remains an error:
2065
2066 typed: ... untyped;
2067
2068 ** Values of mid-rule actions
2069 The following code:
2070
2071 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
2072
2073 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
2074 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
2075 \f
2076 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
2077
2078 ** GLR parsing
2079 The declaration
2080 %glr-parser
2081 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
2082 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
2083 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
2084 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2085
2086 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
2087 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
2088
2089 ** Output Directory
2090 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2091 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2092 now creates "bar.c".
2093
2094 ** Undefined token
2095 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2096 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2097
2098 ** Unknown token numbers
2099 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2100 no longer the case.
2101
2102 ** Error token
2103 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2104 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2105 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2106 will be mapped onto another number.
2107
2108 ** Verbose error messages
2109 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2110 error recovery is possible.
2111
2112 ** End token
2113 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2114
2115 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2116 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2117 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2118 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2119 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2120 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2121 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2122 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2123 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2124
2125 ** Traces
2126 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2127
2128 ** Larger grammars
2129 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2130 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2131 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2132 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2133
2134 ** Explicit initial rule
2135 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2136 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2137 graphs as rule 0.
2138
2139 ** Useless rules
2140 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2141 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2142
2143 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2144 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2145
2146 ** Rules never reduced
2147 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2148 reported.
2149
2150 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
2151 On a grammar such as
2152
2153 %token useless useful
2154 %%
2155 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2156
2157 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2158 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2159
2160 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2161 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2162
2163 ** Default locations
2164 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2165 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2166 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2167 the computation of @$.
2168
2169 ** Token end-of-file
2170 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2171 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2172 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2173 For instance
2174 %token MYEOF 0
2175 or
2176 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2177
2178 ** Semantic parser
2179 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2180
2181 ** New translations
2182 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2183 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2184
2185 ** Incorrect token definitions
2186 When given
2187 %token 'a' "A"
2188 bison used to output
2189 #define 'a' 65
2190
2191 ** Token definitions as enums
2192 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2193 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2194 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2195
2196 ** Reports
2197 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2198 produces additional information:
2199 - itemset
2200 complete the core item sets with their closure
2201 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2202 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2203 - solved
2204 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2205 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2206 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2207
2208 ** Type clashes
2209 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2210 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2211
2212 %type <foo> bar
2213 %%
2214 bar: '0' {} '0';
2215
2216 This is fixed.
2217
2218 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2219 \f
2220 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2221
2222 ** C Skeleton
2223 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2224 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2225 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2226
2227 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2228 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2229 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2230 kludge will be disabled.
2231
2232 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2233 extended.
2234 \f
2235 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2236
2237 ** File name clashes are detected
2238 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2239 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2240
2241 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2242 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2243 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2244 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2245 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2246 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2247
2248 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2249 many portability hassles.
2250
2251 ** DJGPP support added.
2252
2253 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2254 \f
2255 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2256
2257 ** Fix C++ issues
2258 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2259 under some conditions.
2260
2261 ** Catch invalid @n
2262 As is done with $n.
2263 \f
2264 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2265
2266 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2267
2268 ** Portability fixes
2269
2270 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2271 \f
2272 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2273
2274 ** Many Bug Fixes
2275
2276 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2277 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2278 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2279 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2280 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2281
2282 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2283 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2284 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2285
2286 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2287 problems as on AIX.
2288
2289 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2290
2291 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2292 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2293
2294 ** User Actions
2295 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2296 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2297 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2298
2299 ** Better C++ compliance
2300 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2301 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2302
2303 ** Reduced Grammars
2304 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2305
2306 ** 64 bit hosts
2307 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2308
2309 ** Error messages
2310 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2311
2312 ** %expect
2313 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2314 any warning.
2315
2316 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2317
2318 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2319
2320 ** Swedish translation
2321
2322 ** Parse errors
2323 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2324 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2325 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2326
2327 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2328 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2329 previous allocations were not freed.
2330
2331 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2332 Some newlines were missing.
2333 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2334
2335 ** Fixed conflict report.
2336 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2337
2338 ** %expect
2339 Was not used.
2340 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2341
2342 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2343
2344 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2345
2346 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2347
2348 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2349 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2350
2351 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2352
2353 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2354 New.
2355
2356 ** --output
2357 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2358 \f
2359 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2360
2361 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2362 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2363 argument.
2364
2365 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2366 experiment.
2367
2368 ** Portability fixes.
2369 \f
2370 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2371
2372 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2373 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2374 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2375 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2376
2377 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2378
2379 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2380
2381 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2382
2383 ** Russian translation added.
2384
2385 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2386
2387 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2388
2389 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2390
2391 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2392
2393 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2394
2395 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2396 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2397
2398 ** New directives.
2399 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2400 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2401
2402 ** @$
2403 Automatic location tracking.
2404 \f
2405 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2406
2407 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2408
2409 ** Added NLS.
2410
2411 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2412
2413 ** There is now a FAQ.
2414 \f
2415 * Changes in version 1.27:
2416
2417 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2418 some systems has been fixed.
2419 \f
2420 * Changes in version 1.26:
2421
2422 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2423
2424 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2425
2426 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2427
2428 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2429
2430 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2431
2432 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2433
2434 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2435 not provide alloca().
2436 \f
2437 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2438
2439 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2440 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2441
2442 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2443 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2444 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2445
2446 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2447 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2448 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2449 purposes.
2450
2451 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2452 directives in the parser file.
2453
2454 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2455 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2456
2457 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2458 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2459 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2460 a switch statement body.
2461 \f
2462 * Changes in version 1.23:
2463
2464 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2465 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2466 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2467 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2468
2469 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2470 \f
2471 * Changes in version 1.22:
2472
2473 --help option added.
2474 \f
2475 * Changes in version 1.20:
2476
2477 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2478
2479 -----
2480
2481 Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2482
2483 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2484
2485 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2486 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2487 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2488 (at your option) any later version.
2489
2490 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2491 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2492 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2493 GNU General Public License for more details.
2494
2495 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2496 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2497
2498 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2499 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2500 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2501 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2502 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2503 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2504 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2505 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2506 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2507 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2508 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2509 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2510 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2511 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2512 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2513 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2514 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2515 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2516 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts
2517
2518 Local Variables:
2519 mode: outline
2520 fill-column: 76
2521 End: