3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 Portability issues in the test suite.
9 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0 (2013-07-25) [stable]
11 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
13 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
14 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
15 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
17 ** Backward incompatible changes
21 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
23 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
24 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
26 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
27 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
29 Missing semicolons at the end of actions are no longer added (as announced
32 *** Use of YACC='bison -y'
34 TL;DR: With Autoconf <= 2.69, pass -Wno-yacc to (AM_)YFLAGS if you use
37 Traditional Yacc generates 'y.tab.c' whatever the name of the input file.
38 Therefore Makefiles written for Yacc expect 'y.tab.c' (and possibly
39 'y.tab.h' and 'y.outout') to be generated from 'foo.y'.
41 To this end, for ages, AC_PROG_YACC, Autoconf's macro to look for an
42 implementation of Yacc, was using Bison as 'bison -y'. While it does
43 ensure compatible output file names, it also enables warnings for
44 incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc. In other words, 'bison -y' triggers
45 warnings for Bison extensions.
47 Autoconf 2.70+ fixes this incompatibility by using YACC='bison -o y.tab.c'
48 (which also generates 'y.tab.h' and 'y.output' when needed).
49 Alternatively, disable Yacc warnings by passing '-Wno-yacc' to your Yacc
50 flags (YFLAGS, or AM_YFLAGS with Automake).
54 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
56 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
57 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
58 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
59 preprocessor expansion:
61 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
63 This is fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
64 identifiers for user-provided variables.
66 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
68 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
69 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
71 *** Warnings about useless %pure-parser/%define api.pure are restored
73 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
75 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
80 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
81 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
82 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
84 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
85 the caret information only. For instance on:
92 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
93 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
97 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
98 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
102 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
104 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
105 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
107 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
109 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
110 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
111 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
113 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
114 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
115 errors (and only those):
117 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
119 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
120 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
122 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
124 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
126 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
127 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
129 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
130 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
131 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
133 *** The display of warnings is now richer
135 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
137 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
139 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
140 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
141 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
143 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
146 bison: warnings being treated as errors
147 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
151 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
153 *** Deprecated constructs
155 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
156 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
157 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
159 *** Useless semantic types
161 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
162 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
163 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
164 types that trigger the warning:
168 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
169 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
171 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
173 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
174 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
176 *** Undefined but unused symbols
178 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
179 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
182 %destructor {} symbol2
187 *** Useless destructors or printers
189 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
190 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
191 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
192 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
194 %token <type1> token1
198 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
199 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
203 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
204 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
208 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
210 compare the previous version of bison:
213 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
214 $ bison -Werror foo.y
215 bison: warnings being treated as errors
216 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
218 with the new behavior:
221 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
222 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
223 $ bison -Werror foo.y
224 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
225 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
227 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
232 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
237 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
238 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
239 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
244 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
245 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
247 ** Incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc
249 The 'yacc' category is no longer part of '-Wall', enable it explicitly
252 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
254 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
255 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
256 or more arguments. Instead of
258 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
259 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
260 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
261 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
265 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
267 ** Types of values for %define variables
269 Bison used to make no difference between '%define foo bar' and '%define
270 foo "bar"'. The former is now called a 'keyword value', and the latter a
271 'string value'. A third kind was added: 'code values', such as '%define
274 Keyword variables are used for fixed value sets, e.g.,
278 Code variables are used for value in the target language, e.g.,
280 %define api.value.type {struct semantic_type}
282 String variables are used remaining cases, e.g. file names.
284 ** Variable api.token.prefix
286 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
287 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
288 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
290 %token FILE for ERROR
291 %define api.token.prefix {TOK_}
293 start: FILE for ERROR;
295 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
296 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
297 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
298 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
300 ** Variable api.value.type
302 This new %define variable supersedes the #define macro YYSTYPE. The use
303 of YYSTYPE is discouraged. In particular, #defining YYSTYPE *and* either
304 using %union or %defining api.value.type results in undefined behavior.
306 Either define api.value.type, or use "%union":
313 %token <ival> INT "integer"
314 %token <sval> STRING "string"
315 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <ival>
316 %destructor { free ($$); } <sval>
319 yylval.ival = 42; return INT;
320 yylval.sval = "42"; return STRING;
322 The %define variable api.value.type supports both keyword and code values.
324 The keyword value 'union' means that the user provides genuine types, not
325 union member names such as "ival" and "sval" above (WARNING: will fail if
326 -y/--yacc/%yacc is enabled).
328 %define api.value.type union
329 %token <int> INT "integer"
330 %token <char *> STRING "string"
331 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <int>
332 %destructor { free ($$); } <char *>
335 yylval.INT = 42; return INT;
336 yylval.STRING = "42"; return STRING;
338 The keyword value variant is somewhat equivalent, but for C++ special
339 provision is made to allow classes to be used (more about this below).
341 %define api.value.type variant
342 %token <int> INT "integer"
343 %token <std::string> STRING "string"
345 Code values (in braces) denote user defined types. This is where YYSTYPE
363 %define api.value.type {struct my_value}
364 %token <u.ival> INT "integer"
365 %token <u.sval> STRING "string"
366 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <u.ival>
367 %destructor { free ($$); } <u.sval>
370 yylval.u.ival = 42; return INT;
371 yylval.u.sval = "42"; return STRING;
373 ** Variable parse.error
375 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
376 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
379 ** Renamed %define variables
381 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
382 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
384 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
385 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
386 namespace -> api.namespace
387 stype -> api.value.type
389 ** Semantic predicates
391 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
393 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
394 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
395 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
396 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
397 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
400 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
402 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
403 reduce/reduce conflicts.
405 ** Tokens are numbered in their order of appearance
407 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
409 With '%token A B', A had a number less than the one of B. However,
410 precedence declarations used to generate a reversed order. This is now
411 fixed, and introducing tokens with any of %token, %left, %right,
412 %precedence, or %nonassoc yields the same result.
414 When mixing declarations of tokens with a litteral character (e.g., 'a')
415 or with an identifier (e.g., B) in a precedence declaration, Bison
416 numbered the litteral characters first. For example
420 would lead to the tokens declared in this order: 'c' 'd' A B. Again, the
421 input order is now preserved.
423 These changes were made so that one can remove useless precedence and
424 associativity declarations (i.e., map %nonassoc, %left or %right to
425 %precedence, or to %token) and get exactly the same output.
427 ** Useless precedence and associativity
429 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
431 When developing and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
432 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
433 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
434 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
435 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
436 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
437 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
439 *** Precedence warning category
441 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
442 useless precedence and associativity directives.
444 *** Useless associativity
446 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
447 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
448 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
449 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
463 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
467 *** Useless precedence
469 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
470 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
471 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
472 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
476 exp: "var" '=' "number";
480 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
484 *** Useless precedence and associativity
486 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
491 exp: "var" '=' "number";
495 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
501 With help from Joel E. Denny and Gabriel Rassoul.
503 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
504 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
505 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
506 %empty. On the following grammar:
516 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
519 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
523 ** Java skeleton improvements
525 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
526 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
527 and "%define init_throws".
528 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
530 The Java skeleton now supports push parsing.
531 Contributed by Dennis Heimbigner.
533 ** C++ skeletons improvements
535 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
537 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
538 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
539 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
541 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
543 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
545 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
547 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
548 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
549 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
550 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
551 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
552 factory invoked by the user actions).
554 *** %define api.value.type variant
556 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
557 from Théophile Ranquet.
559 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
562 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
565 %type <::std::string> item;
566 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
569 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
573 %empty { /* Generates an empty string list. */ }
574 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
578 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
579 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
582 *** %define api.token.constructor
584 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
585 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
586 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
588 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
590 parser::location_type loc = ...;
592 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
594 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
596 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
602 There are operator- and operator-= for 'location'. Negative line/column
603 increments can no longer underflow the resulting value.
605 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7.1 (2013-04-15) [stable]
609 *** Fix compiler attribute portability (yacc.c)
611 With locations enabled, __attribute__ was used unprotected.
613 *** Fix some compiler warnings (lalr1.cc)
615 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
619 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
621 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
623 ** Diagnostics are improved
625 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
627 *** Changes in the format of error messages
629 This used to be the format of many error reports:
631 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
632 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
636 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
637 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
639 *** New format for error reports: carets
641 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
643 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
646 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
652 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
653 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
655 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
656 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
658 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
659 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
661 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
662 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
665 The default behavior for now is still not to display these unless
666 explicitly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
667 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
670 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
672 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
673 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
674 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
675 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
676 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
679 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
680 "%define api.pure full".
682 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
684 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
685 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
686 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
687 then responsible to define her type.
689 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
690 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
693 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
694 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
697 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
698 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
701 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
703 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
704 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
705 before re-throwing the exception.
707 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
710 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
712 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
714 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
715 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
716 numbered and left-justified.
718 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
719 diamond shaped nodes.
721 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
722 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
724 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
726 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
727 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
731 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
732 have been fixed and extended.
734 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
735 were not properly documented.
737 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
739 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
741 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
742 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
743 reporting them to us.
747 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
748 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
751 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
753 Null characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
755 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
756 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
758 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
760 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
762 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
766 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
768 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
769 users to the appropriate place to report them.
771 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
773 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
774 generated, are removed.
776 All the generated headers are self-contained.
778 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
780 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
781 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
782 For instance the header generated from
784 %define api.prefix "calc"
785 %defines "lib/parse.h"
787 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
789 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
791 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
794 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
795 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
796 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
800 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
802 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
803 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
806 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
810 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
811 suite have been fixed.
813 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
815 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
816 invalid C++. This is fixed.
818 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
820 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
822 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
824 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
828 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
829 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
830 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
832 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
836 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
840 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
842 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
844 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
846 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
847 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
850 ** Type names in actions
852 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
853 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
855 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
857 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
858 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
860 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
864 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
865 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
869 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
870 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
873 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
875 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
878 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
879 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
881 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
884 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
886 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
887 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
888 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
889 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
892 ** Generated Parser Headers
894 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
896 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
897 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
902 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
904 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
906 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
907 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
909 int bar_parse (void);
913 #define yyparse bar_parse
916 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
917 single compilation unit.
919 *** Exported symbols in C++
921 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
922 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
923 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
927 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
930 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
932 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
933 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
934 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
935 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
936 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
937 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
938 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
940 The following examples compares both:
942 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
943 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
944 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
950 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
951 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
953 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
954 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
955 > # if defined YYDEBUG
957 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
959 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
962 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
966 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
967 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
970 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
971 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
972 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
973 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
978 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
979 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
980 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
983 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
984 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
987 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
989 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
991 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
993 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
997 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
999 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
1001 ** glr.c improvements:
1003 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
1005 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
1006 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
1008 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
1010 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
1011 when -std is passed to GCC).
1013 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
1015 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
1016 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
1020 *** C++11 compatibility:
1022 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
1027 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
1028 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
1030 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
1031 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
1033 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
1035 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
1036 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
1037 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
1039 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
1041 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1042 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1044 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1048 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
1049 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
1050 documentation were fixed.
1052 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
1054 ** Changes in the manual:
1056 *** %printer is documented
1058 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
1059 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
1061 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
1062 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
1064 *** Several improvements have been made:
1066 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
1067 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
1068 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
1069 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
1073 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
1075 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
1076 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
1078 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
1080 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
1082 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
1083 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
1085 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
1087 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
1088 halts in the middle of its course.
1090 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
1092 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
1094 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
1095 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
1096 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
1097 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
1098 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
1100 ** Named references:
1102 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
1103 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
1106 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
1107 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
1108 as named references:
1110 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
1111 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
1113 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
1115 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
1116 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
1118 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
1119 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
1120 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
1122 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
1123 will help to stabilize them.
1124 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
1126 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
1128 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
1129 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
1130 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
1131 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
1132 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
1133 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
1134 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
1135 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
1136 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
1138 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
1139 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
1140 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
1141 file with these directives:
1143 %define lr.type lalr
1144 %define lr.type ielr
1145 %define lr.type canonical-lr
1147 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
1148 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
1149 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
1152 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1155 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
1157 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
1159 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
1160 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
1161 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
1162 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
1163 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
1164 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
1165 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
1166 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
1167 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
1168 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
1171 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
1172 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
1173 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
1174 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
1175 inconsistent states.
1177 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
1178 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
1179 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
1180 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
1181 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
1182 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
1183 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
1184 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
1187 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
1188 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
1190 %define parse.lac full
1192 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
1193 details including a few caveats.
1195 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
1198 ** %define improvements:
1200 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
1202 Each of these command-line options
1205 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
1208 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
1210 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
1212 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
1214 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
1215 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
1216 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
1217 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
1219 *** Variables renamed:
1221 The following %define variables
1224 lr.keep_unreachable_states
1226 have been renamed to
1229 lr.keep-unreachable-states
1231 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
1232 for backward compatibility.
1234 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
1236 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
1237 within quotations marks. For example,
1239 %define api.push-pull "push"
1243 %define api.push-pull push
1245 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1247 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1249 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1251 ** Character literals not of length one:
1253 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1254 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1255 the following grammar to be the same token:
1261 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1262 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1264 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1266 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1267 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1268 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1269 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1271 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1273 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1274 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1275 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1276 and "last" members, instead of
1278 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1282 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1283 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1287 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1293 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1297 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1298 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1302 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1306 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1308 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1309 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1310 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1311 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1313 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1315 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1316 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1317 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1318 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1319 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1320 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1321 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1322 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1324 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1326 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1327 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1328 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1329 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1331 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1335 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1337 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1338 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1339 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1340 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1341 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1342 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1343 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1345 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1347 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1348 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1349 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1350 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1351 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1353 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1354 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1355 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1356 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1357 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1358 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1359 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1360 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1361 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1362 shifted or discarded.
1364 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1365 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1366 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1367 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1369 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1370 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1371 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1372 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1373 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1374 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1375 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1376 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1377 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1378 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1379 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1380 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1383 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1385 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1387 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1388 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1390 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1392 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1394 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1396 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1397 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1399 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1401 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1403 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1404 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1405 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1406 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1409 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1410 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1411 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1412 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1414 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1415 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1416 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1417 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1419 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1421 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1422 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1424 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1426 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1428 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1429 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1430 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1431 suppress all warnings:
1435 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1437 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1438 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1439 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1443 This bug has been fixed.
1445 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1447 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1448 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1450 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1453 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1455 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1458 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1459 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1460 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1461 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1463 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1465 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1467 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1468 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1469 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1470 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1473 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1475 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1476 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1477 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1478 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1479 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1480 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1481 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1482 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1483 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1485 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1487 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1488 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1491 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1493 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1497 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1498 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1501 %code requires {CODE}
1502 %code provides {CODE}
1505 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1506 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1507 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1508 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1509 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1511 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1512 is still considered experimental.
1514 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1516 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1517 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1518 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1519 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1520 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1523 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1524 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1525 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1526 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1527 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1528 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1529 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1531 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1533 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1534 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1535 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1536 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1537 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1538 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1539 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1540 be removed altogether.
1542 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1543 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1544 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1545 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1546 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1547 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1548 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1549 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1550 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1551 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1553 ** Internationalization.
1555 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1556 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1559 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1561 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1562 declarations have been fixed.
1564 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1566 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1567 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1569 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1573 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1575 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1576 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1577 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1578 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1579 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1582 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1584 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1586 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1588 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1589 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1590 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1591 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1594 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1596 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1599 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1601 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1604 %define NAME "VALUE"
1606 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1610 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1611 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1615 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1616 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1617 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1618 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1619 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1621 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1622 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1624 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1626 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1627 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1629 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1630 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1631 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1635 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1636 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1637 %skeleton to select it.
1639 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1641 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1642 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1643 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1647 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1648 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1649 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1650 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1652 ** XML Automaton Report
1654 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1655 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1656 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1657 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1659 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1660 %defines. For example:
1664 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1665 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1666 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1667 instead of "unused".
1669 ** Unreachable State Removal
1671 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1672 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1673 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1675 1. Removes unreachable states.
1677 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1678 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1679 directives in existing grammar files.
1681 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1682 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1684 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1686 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1688 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1689 for further discussion.
1691 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1693 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1694 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1695 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1696 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1697 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1698 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1699 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1702 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1705 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1708 %file-prefix "parser"
1712 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1714 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1715 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1716 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1717 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1720 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1721 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1722 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1723 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1725 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1726 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1727 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1728 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1730 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1731 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1733 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1735 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1736 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1739 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1741 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1742 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1744 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1746 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1747 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1748 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1750 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1751 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1753 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1755 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1758 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1759 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1760 declared semantic type tags.
1762 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1763 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1766 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1767 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1768 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1769 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1771 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1772 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1775 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1778 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1779 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1780 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1782 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1783 completely removed from Bison.
1785 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1787 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1788 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1789 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1790 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1791 and is required by POSIX.
1793 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1794 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1796 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1800 %union { char *string; }
1801 %token <string> STRING1
1802 %token <string> STRING2
1803 %type <string> string1
1804 %type <string> string2
1805 %union { char character; }
1806 %token <character> CHR
1807 %type <character> chr
1808 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1809 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1810 %destructor { } <character>
1812 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1813 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1814 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1815 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1816 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1818 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1819 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1822 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1823 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1824 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1825 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1826 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1828 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1829 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1831 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1832 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1833 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1834 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1835 declared after the first %union.
1837 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1838 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1839 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1840 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1841 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1842 after the token definitions.
1844 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1845 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1847 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1848 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1851 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1852 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1853 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1857 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1858 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1859 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1860 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1861 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1864 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1865 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1866 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1867 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1870 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1871 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1872 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1875 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1876 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1877 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1878 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1882 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1883 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1884 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1885 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1886 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1889 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1890 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1892 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1893 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1895 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1896 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1897 in a future release.
1899 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1901 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1902 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1904 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1905 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1907 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1909 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1910 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1911 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1913 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1915 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1917 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1918 their contents together.
1920 ** New warning: unused values
1921 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1922 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1924 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1928 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1929 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1930 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1932 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1933 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1935 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1938 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1939 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1940 values are used, e.g.:
1942 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1943 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1946 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1947 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1949 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1951 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1952 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1954 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1955 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1956 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1957 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1959 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1960 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1961 instead of warnings.
1963 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1964 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1965 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1967 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1969 ** %require "VERSION"
1970 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1971 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1973 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1974 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1975 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1976 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1977 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1979 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1980 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1981 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1982 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1984 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1985 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1987 ** DJGPP support added.
1989 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1991 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1993 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1994 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1995 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1996 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1997 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1998 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
2000 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
2001 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
2002 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
2003 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
2005 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
2006 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
2007 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
2009 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
2010 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
2011 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
2012 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
2013 unexpected "number"'.
2015 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
2017 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
2019 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
2020 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
2021 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
2022 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
2023 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
2025 - Error token location.
2026 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
2027 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
2028 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
2029 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
2031 - Semicolon changes:
2032 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
2033 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
2035 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
2036 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
2037 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
2038 forget a closing quote.
2040 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
2044 - GLR grammars now support locations.
2046 - New directive: %initial-action.
2047 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
2048 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
2050 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
2051 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
2053 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
2054 This is a GNU extension.
2056 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
2057 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
2059 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
2061 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
2062 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
2066 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
2067 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
2068 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
2069 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
2070 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
2071 these violations will become errors again.
2073 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
2074 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
2076 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
2078 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
2080 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
2081 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
2083 ** syntax error processing
2085 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
2086 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
2089 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
2090 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
2093 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
2095 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
2096 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
2098 ** POSIX conformance
2100 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
2101 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
2102 compatibility with Yacc.
2104 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
2105 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
2106 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
2107 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
2110 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
2111 declared before use. C99 requires this.
2113 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
2114 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
2116 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
2117 output as "foo\\bar.y".
2119 - Yacc command and library now available
2120 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
2121 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
2122 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
2123 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
2125 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
2127 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
2128 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
2129 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
2131 ** Other compatibility issues
2133 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
2134 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
2135 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
2136 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
2137 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
2138 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
2140 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
2141 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
2143 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
2144 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
2146 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
2147 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
2148 withdrawn in a future release.
2153 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
2156 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
2157 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
2159 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
2160 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
2161 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
2164 - a single argument only can be added,
2165 - their types are weak (void *),
2166 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
2167 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
2169 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
2172 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
2173 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
2174 %parse-param {int *randomness}
2176 results in the following signatures:
2178 int yylex (int *nastiness);
2179 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2181 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
2183 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
2184 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2186 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
2187 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
2188 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
2190 ** #line in output files
2191 - --no-line works properly.
2193 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
2194 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
2195 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
2196 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
2198 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
2200 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
2202 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
2205 Fix spurious parse errors.
2208 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
2209 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
2212 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
2213 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
2217 but the converse remains an error:
2221 ** Values of mid-rule actions
2224 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
2226 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
2227 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
2229 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
2234 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
2235 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
2236 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
2237 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2239 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
2240 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
2243 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2244 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2245 now creates "bar.c".
2248 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2249 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2251 ** Unknown token numbers
2252 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2256 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2257 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2258 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2259 will be mapped onto another number.
2261 ** Verbose error messages
2262 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2263 error recovery is possible.
2266 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2268 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2269 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2270 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2271 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2272 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2273 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2274 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2275 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2276 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2279 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2282 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2283 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2284 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2285 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2287 ** Explicit initial rule
2288 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2289 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2293 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2294 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2296 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2297 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2299 ** Rules never reduced
2300 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2303 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
2304 On a grammar such as
2306 %token useless useful
2308 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2310 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2311 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2313 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2314 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2316 ** Default locations
2317 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2318 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2319 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2320 the computation of @$.
2322 ** Token end-of-file
2323 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2324 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2325 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2329 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2332 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2335 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2336 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2338 ** Incorrect token definitions
2341 bison used to output
2344 ** Token definitions as enums
2345 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2346 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2347 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2350 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2351 produces additional information:
2353 complete the core item sets with their closure
2354 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2355 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2357 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2358 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2359 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2362 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2363 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2371 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2373 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2376 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2377 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2378 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2380 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2381 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2382 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2383 kludge will be disabled.
2385 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2388 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2390 ** File name clashes are detected
2391 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2392 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2394 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2395 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2396 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2397 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2398 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2399 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2401 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2402 many portability hassles.
2404 ** DJGPP support added.
2406 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2408 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2411 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2412 under some conditions.
2417 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2419 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2421 ** Portability fixes
2423 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2425 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2429 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2430 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2431 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2432 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2433 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2435 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2436 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2437 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2439 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2442 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2444 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2445 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2448 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2449 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2450 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2452 ** Better C++ compliance
2453 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2454 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2457 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2460 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2463 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2466 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2469 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2471 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2473 ** Swedish translation
2476 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2477 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2478 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2480 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2481 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2482 previous allocations were not freed.
2484 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2485 Some newlines were missing.
2486 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2488 ** Fixed conflict report.
2489 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2493 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2495 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2497 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2499 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2501 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2502 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2504 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2506 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2510 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2512 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2514 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2515 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2518 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2521 ** Portability fixes.
2523 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2525 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2526 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2527 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2528 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2530 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2532 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2534 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2536 ** Russian translation added.
2538 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2540 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2542 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2544 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2546 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2548 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2549 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2552 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2553 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2556 Automatic location tracking.
2558 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2560 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2564 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2566 ** There is now a FAQ.
2568 * Changes in version 1.27:
2570 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2571 some systems has been fixed.
2573 * Changes in version 1.26:
2575 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2577 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2579 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2581 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2583 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2585 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2587 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2588 not provide alloca().
2590 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2592 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2593 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2595 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2596 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2597 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2599 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2600 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2601 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2604 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2605 directives in the parser file.
2607 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2608 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2610 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2611 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2612 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2613 a switch statement body.
2615 * Changes in version 1.23:
2617 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2618 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2619 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2620 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2622 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2624 * Changes in version 1.22:
2626 --help option added.
2628 * Changes in version 1.20:
2630 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2634 Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2636 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2638 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2639 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2640 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2641 (at your option) any later version.
2643 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2644 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2645 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2646 GNU General Public License for more details.
2648 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2649 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2651 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2652 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2653 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2654 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2655 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2656 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2657 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2658 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2659 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2660 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2661 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2662 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2663 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2664 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2665 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2666 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2667 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2668 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2669 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts parsers yystackp yyval yynerrs
2670 LocalWords: Théophile Ranquet Santet fno fnone stype associativity Tolmer
2671 LocalWords: Wprecedence Rassoul Wempty Paolo Bonzini parser's Michiel loc
2672 LocalWords: redeclaration sval fcaret reentrant XSLT xsl Wmaybe yyvsp Tedi
2673 LocalWords: pragmas noreturn untyped Rozenman unexpanded Wojciech Polak
2674 LocalWords: Alexandre MERCHANTABILITY yytype