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