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