3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
5 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
7 Bison will stop adding a semicolon at the end of the actions (as announced
10 foo.y:2.22: warning: a ';' might be needed at the end of action code
11 exp: "num" { $$ = $1 }
13 foo.y:2.22: future versions of Bison will not add the ';'
15 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
16 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
17 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
19 ** Backward incompatible changes
23 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
25 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
26 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
28 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
29 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
33 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines
35 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
36 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
37 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
38 preprocessor expansion:
40 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
42 This is has been fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
43 identifiers for user-provided variables.
45 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
47 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
48 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
50 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
52 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
57 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
58 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
59 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
61 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
63 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
64 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
65 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
67 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
68 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
69 errors (and only those):
71 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
73 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
74 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
76 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
78 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
80 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
81 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
83 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
84 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
85 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
87 *** The display of warnings is now richer
89 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
91 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
93 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
94 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
95 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
97 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
100 bison: warnings being treated as errors
101 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
105 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
107 *** Deprecated constructs
109 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
110 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
111 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
113 *** Useless semantic types
115 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
116 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
117 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
118 types that trigger the warning:
122 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
123 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
125 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
127 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
128 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
130 *** Undefined but unused symbols
132 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
133 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
136 %destructor {} symbol2
141 *** Useless destructors or printers
143 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
144 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
145 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
146 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
148 %token <type1> token1
152 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
153 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
157 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
158 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
162 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
164 compare the previous version of bison:
167 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
168 $ bison -Werror foo.y
169 bison: warnings being treated as errors
170 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
172 with the new behavior:
175 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
176 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
177 $ bison -Werror foo.y
178 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
179 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
181 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
186 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
191 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
192 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
193 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
198 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
199 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
201 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
203 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
204 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
205 or more arguments. Instead of
207 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
208 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
209 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
210 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
214 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
216 ** Java skeleton improvements
218 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
220 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
221 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
222 and "%define init_throws".
224 ** C++ skeletons improvements
226 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
228 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
229 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
230 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
232 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
234 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
236 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
238 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
239 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
240 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
241 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
242 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
243 factory invoked by the user actions).
245 ** Renamed %define variables
247 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
248 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
250 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
251 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
252 namespace -> api.namespace
253 stype -> api.value.type
255 ** Variable api.token.prefix
257 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
258 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
259 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
261 %token FILE for ERROR
262 %define api.token.prefix "TOK_"
264 start: FILE for ERROR;
266 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
267 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
268 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
269 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
271 ** Variable parse.error
273 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
274 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
277 ** Semantic predicates
279 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
281 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
282 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
283 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
284 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
285 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
288 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
290 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
291 reduce/reduce conflicts.
293 ** Token numbering has changed to preserve the user-defined order
295 When declaring %token A B, the numbering for A is inferior to B. Up to now,
296 when declaring associativity at the same time, with %left (or %right,
297 %precedence, %nonassoc), B was inferior to A.
299 ** Useless precedence and associativity
301 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
303 When developping and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
304 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
305 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
306 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
307 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
308 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
309 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
311 *** Precedence warning category
313 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
314 useless precedence and associativity directives.
316 *** Useless associativity
318 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
319 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
320 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
321 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
335 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
339 *** Useless precedence
341 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
342 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
343 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
344 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
348 exp: "var" '=' "num";
352 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
356 *** Useless precedence and associativity
358 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
363 exp: "var" '=' "num";
367 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
371 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
375 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
377 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
379 ** Diagnostics are improved
381 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
383 *** Changes in the format of error messages
385 This used to be the format of many error reports:
387 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
388 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
392 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
393 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
395 *** New format for error reports: carets
397 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
399 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
402 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
408 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
409 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
411 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
412 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
414 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
415 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
417 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
418 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
421 The default behaviour for now is still not to display these unless
422 explictly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
423 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
426 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
428 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
429 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
430 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
431 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
432 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
435 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
436 "%define api.pure full".
438 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
440 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
441 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
442 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
443 then responsible to define her type.
445 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
446 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
449 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
450 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
453 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
454 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
457 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
459 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
460 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
461 before re-throwing the exception.
463 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
466 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
468 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
470 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
471 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
472 numbered and left-justified.
474 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
475 diamond shaped nodes.
477 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
478 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
480 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
482 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
483 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
487 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
488 have been fixed and extended.
490 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
491 were not properly documented.
493 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
495 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
497 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
498 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
499 reporting them to us.
503 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
504 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
507 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
509 Nul characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
511 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
512 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
514 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
516 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
518 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
522 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
524 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
525 users to the appropriate place to report them.
527 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
529 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
530 generated, are removed.
532 All the generated headers are self-contained.
534 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
536 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
537 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
538 For instance the header generated from
540 %define api.prefix "calc"
541 %defines "lib/parse.h"
543 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
545 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
547 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
550 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
551 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
552 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
556 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
558 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
559 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
562 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
566 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
567 suite have been fixed.
569 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
571 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
572 invalid C++. This is fixed.
574 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
576 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
578 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
580 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
584 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
585 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
586 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
588 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
592 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
596 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
598 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
600 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
602 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
603 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
606 ** Type names in actions
608 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
609 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
611 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
613 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
614 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
616 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
620 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
621 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
625 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
626 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
629 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
631 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
634 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
635 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
637 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
640 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
642 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
643 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
644 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
645 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
648 ** Generated Parser Headers
650 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
652 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
653 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
658 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
660 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
662 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
663 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
665 int bar_parse (void);
669 #define yyparse bar_parse
672 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
673 single compilation unit.
675 *** Exported symbols in C++
677 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
678 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
679 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
683 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
686 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
688 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
689 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
690 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
691 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
692 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
693 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
694 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
696 The following examples compares both:
698 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
699 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
700 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
706 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
707 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
709 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
710 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
711 > # if defined YYDEBUG
713 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
715 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
718 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
722 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
723 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
726 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
727 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
728 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
729 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
734 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
735 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
736 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
739 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
740 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
743 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
745 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
747 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
749 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
753 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
755 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
757 ** glr.c improvements:
759 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
761 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
762 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
764 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
766 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
767 when -std is passed to GCC).
769 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
771 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
772 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
776 *** C++11 compatibility:
778 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
783 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
784 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
786 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
787 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
789 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
791 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
792 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
793 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
795 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
797 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
798 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
800 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
804 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
805 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
806 documentation were fixed.
808 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
810 ** Changes in the manual:
812 *** %printer is documented
814 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
815 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
817 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
818 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
820 *** Several improvements have been made:
822 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
823 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
824 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
825 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
829 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
831 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
832 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
834 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
836 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
838 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
839 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
841 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
843 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
844 halts in the middle of its course.
846 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
848 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
850 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
851 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
852 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
853 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
854 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
858 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
859 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
862 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
863 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
866 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
867 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
869 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
871 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
872 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
874 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
875 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
876 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
878 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
879 will help to stabilize them.
880 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
882 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
884 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
885 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
886 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
887 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
888 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
889 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
890 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
891 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
892 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
894 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
895 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
896 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
897 file with these directives:
901 %define lr.type canonical-lr
903 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
904 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
905 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
908 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
911 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
913 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
915 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
916 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
917 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
918 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
919 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
920 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
921 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
922 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
923 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
924 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
927 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
928 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
929 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
930 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
933 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
934 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
935 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
936 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
937 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
938 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
939 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
940 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
943 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
944 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
946 %define parse.lac full
948 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
949 details including a few caveats.
951 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
954 ** %define improvements:
956 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
958 Each of these command-line options
961 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
964 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
966 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
968 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
970 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
971 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
972 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
973 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
975 *** Variables renamed:
977 The following %define variables
980 lr.keep_unreachable_states
985 lr.keep-unreachable-states
987 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
988 for backward compatibility.
990 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
992 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
993 within quotations marks. For example,
995 %define api.push-pull "push"
999 %define api.push-pull push
1001 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1003 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1005 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1007 ** Character literals not of length one:
1009 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1010 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1011 the following grammar to be the same token:
1017 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1018 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1020 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1022 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1023 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1024 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1025 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1027 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1029 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1030 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1031 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1032 and "last" members, instead of
1034 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1038 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1039 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1043 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1049 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1053 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1054 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1058 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1062 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1064 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1065 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1066 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1067 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1069 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1071 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1072 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1073 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1074 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1075 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1076 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1077 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1078 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1080 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1082 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1083 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1084 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1085 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1087 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1091 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1093 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1094 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1095 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1096 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1097 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1098 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1099 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1101 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1103 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1104 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1105 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1106 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1107 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1109 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1110 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1111 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1112 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1113 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1114 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1115 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1116 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1117 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1118 shifted or discarded.
1120 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1121 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1122 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1123 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1125 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1126 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1127 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1128 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1129 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1130 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1131 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1132 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1133 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1134 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1135 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1136 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1139 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1141 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1143 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1144 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1146 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1148 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1150 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1152 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1153 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1155 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1157 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1159 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1160 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1161 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1162 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1165 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1166 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1167 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1168 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1170 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1171 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1172 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1173 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1175 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1177 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1178 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1180 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1182 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1184 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1185 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1186 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1187 suppress all warnings:
1191 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1193 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1194 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1195 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1199 This bug has been fixed.
1201 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1203 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1204 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1206 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1209 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1211 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1214 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1215 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1216 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1217 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1219 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1221 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1223 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1224 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1225 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1226 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1229 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1231 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1232 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1233 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1234 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1235 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1236 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1237 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1238 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1239 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1241 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1243 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1244 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1247 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1249 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1253 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1254 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1257 %code requires {CODE}
1258 %code provides {CODE}
1261 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1262 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1263 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1264 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1265 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1267 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1268 is still considered experimental.
1270 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1272 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1273 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1274 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1275 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1276 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1279 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1280 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1281 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1282 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1283 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1284 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1285 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1287 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1289 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1290 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1291 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1292 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1293 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1294 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1295 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1296 be removed altogether.
1298 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1299 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1300 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1301 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1302 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1303 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1304 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1305 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1306 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1307 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1309 ** Internationalization.
1311 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1312 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1315 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1317 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1318 declarations have been fixed.
1320 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1322 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1323 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1325 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1329 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1331 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1332 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1333 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1334 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1335 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1338 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1340 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1342 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1344 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1345 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1346 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1347 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1350 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1352 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1355 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1357 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1360 %define NAME "VALUE"
1362 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1366 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1367 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1371 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1372 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1373 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1374 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1375 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1377 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1378 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1380 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1382 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1383 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1385 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1386 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1387 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1391 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1392 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1393 %skeleton to select it.
1395 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1397 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1398 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1399 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1403 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1404 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1405 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1406 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1408 ** XML Automaton Report
1410 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1411 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1412 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1413 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1415 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1416 %defines. For example:
1420 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1421 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1422 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1423 instead of "unused".
1425 ** Unreachable State Removal
1427 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1428 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1429 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1431 1. Removes unreachable states.
1433 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1434 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1435 directives in existing grammar files.
1437 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1438 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1440 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1442 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1444 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1445 for further discussion.
1447 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1449 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1450 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1451 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1452 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1453 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1454 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1455 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1458 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1461 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1464 %file-prefix "parser"
1468 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1470 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1471 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1472 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1473 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1476 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1477 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1478 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1479 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1481 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1482 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1483 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1484 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1486 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1487 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1489 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1491 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1492 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1495 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1497 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1498 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1500 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1502 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1503 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1504 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1506 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1507 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1509 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1511 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1514 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1515 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1516 declared semantic type tags.
1518 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1519 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1522 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1523 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1524 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1525 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1527 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1528 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1531 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1534 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1535 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1536 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1538 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1539 completely removed from Bison.
1541 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1543 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1544 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1545 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1546 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1547 and is required by POSIX.
1549 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1550 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1552 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1556 %union { char *string; }
1557 %token <string> STRING1
1558 %token <string> STRING2
1559 %type <string> string1
1560 %type <string> string2
1561 %union { char character; }
1562 %token <character> CHR
1563 %type <character> chr
1564 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1565 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1566 %destructor { } <character>
1568 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1569 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1570 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1571 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1572 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1574 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1575 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1578 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1579 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1580 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1581 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1582 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1584 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1585 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1587 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1588 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1589 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1590 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1591 declared after the first %union.
1593 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1594 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1595 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1596 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1597 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1598 after the token definitions.
1600 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1601 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1603 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1604 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1607 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1608 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1609 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1613 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1614 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1615 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1616 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1617 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1620 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1621 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1622 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1623 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1626 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1627 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1628 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1631 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1632 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1633 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1634 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1638 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1639 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1640 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1641 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1642 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1645 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1646 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1648 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1649 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1651 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1652 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1653 in a future release.
1655 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1657 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1658 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1660 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1661 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1663 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1665 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1666 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1667 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1669 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1671 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1673 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1674 their contents together.
1676 ** New warning: unused values
1677 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1678 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1680 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1684 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1685 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1686 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1688 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1689 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1691 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1694 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1695 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1696 values are used, e.g.:
1698 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1699 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1702 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1703 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1705 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1707 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1708 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1710 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1711 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1712 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1713 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1715 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1716 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1717 instead of warnings.
1719 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1720 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1721 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1723 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1725 ** %require "VERSION"
1726 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1727 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1729 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1730 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1731 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1732 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1733 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1735 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1736 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1737 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1738 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1740 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1741 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1743 ** DJGPP support added.
1745 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1747 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1749 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1750 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1751 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1752 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1753 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1754 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1756 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1757 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1758 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1759 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1761 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1762 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1763 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1765 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1766 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1767 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1768 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1769 unexpected "number"'.
1771 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1773 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1775 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1776 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1777 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1778 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1779 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1781 - Error token location.
1782 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1783 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1784 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1785 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1787 - Semicolon changes:
1788 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1789 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1791 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1792 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1793 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1794 forget a closing quote.
1796 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1800 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1802 - New directive: %initial-action.
1803 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1804 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1806 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1807 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1809 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1810 This is a GNU extension.
1812 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1813 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1815 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1817 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1818 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1822 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1823 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1824 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1825 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1826 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1827 these violations will become errors again.
1829 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1830 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1832 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1834 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1836 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1837 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1839 ** syntax error processing
1841 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1842 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1845 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1846 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1849 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1851 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1852 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1854 ** POSIX conformance
1856 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1857 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1858 compatibility with Yacc.
1860 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1861 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1862 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1863 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1866 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1867 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1869 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1870 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1872 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1873 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1875 - Yacc command and library now available
1876 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1877 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1878 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1879 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1881 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1883 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1884 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1885 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1887 ** Other compatibility issues
1889 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1890 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1891 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1892 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1893 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1894 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1896 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1897 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1899 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1900 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1902 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1903 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1904 withdrawn in a future release.
1909 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1912 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1913 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1915 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1916 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1917 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1920 - a single argument only can be added,
1921 - their types are weak (void *),
1922 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1923 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1925 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1928 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1929 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1930 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1932 results in the following signatures:
1934 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1935 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1937 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1939 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1940 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1942 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1943 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1944 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1946 ** #line in output files
1947 - --no-line works properly.
1949 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1950 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1951 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1952 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1954 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1956 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1958 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1961 Fix spurious parse errors.
1964 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1965 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1968 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1969 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1973 but the converse remains an error:
1977 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1980 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1982 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1983 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1985 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1990 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1991 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1992 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1993 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1995 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1996 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1999 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2000 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2001 now creates "bar.c".
2004 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2005 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2007 ** Unknown token numbers
2008 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2012 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2013 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2014 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2015 will be mapped onto another number.
2017 ** Verbose error messages
2018 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2019 error recovery is possible.
2022 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2024 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2025 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2026 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2027 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2028 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2029 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2030 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2031 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2032 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2035 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2038 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2039 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2040 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2041 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2043 ** Explicit initial rule
2044 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2045 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2049 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2050 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2052 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2053 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2055 ** Rules never reduced
2056 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2059 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
2060 On a grammar such as
2062 %token useless useful
2064 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2066 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2067 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2069 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2070 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2072 ** Default locations
2073 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2074 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2075 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2076 the computation of @$.
2078 ** Token end-of-file
2079 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2080 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2081 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2085 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2088 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2091 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2092 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2094 ** Incorrect token definitions
2097 bison used to output
2100 ** Token definitions as enums
2101 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2102 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2103 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2106 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2107 produces additional information:
2109 complete the core item sets with their closure
2110 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2111 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2113 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2114 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2115 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2118 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2119 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2127 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2129 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2132 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2133 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2134 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2136 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2137 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2138 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2139 kludge will be disabled.
2141 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2144 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2146 ** File name clashes are detected
2147 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2148 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2150 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2151 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2152 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2153 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2154 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2155 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2157 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2158 many portability hassles.
2160 ** DJGPP support added.
2162 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2164 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2167 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2168 under some conditions.
2173 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2175 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2177 ** Portability fixes
2179 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2181 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2185 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2186 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2187 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2188 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2189 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2191 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2192 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2193 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2195 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2198 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2200 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2201 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2204 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2205 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2206 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2208 ** Better C++ compliance
2209 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2210 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2213 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2216 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2219 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2222 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2225 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2227 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2229 ** Swedish translation
2232 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2233 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2234 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2236 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2237 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2238 previous allocations were not freed.
2240 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2241 Some newlines were missing.
2242 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2244 ** Fixed conflict report.
2245 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2249 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2251 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2253 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2255 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2257 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2258 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2260 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2262 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2266 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2268 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2270 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2271 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2274 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2277 ** Portability fixes.
2279 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2281 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2282 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2283 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2284 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2286 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2288 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2290 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2292 ** Russian translation added.
2294 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2296 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2298 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2300 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2302 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2304 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2305 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2308 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2309 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2312 Automatic location tracking.
2314 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2316 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2320 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2322 ** There is now a FAQ.
2324 * Changes in version 1.27:
2326 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2327 some systems has been fixed.
2329 * Changes in version 1.26:
2331 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2333 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2335 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2337 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2339 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2341 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2343 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2344 not provide alloca().
2346 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2348 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2349 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2351 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2352 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2353 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2355 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2356 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2357 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2360 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2361 directives in the parser file.
2363 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2364 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2366 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2367 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2368 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2369 a switch statement body.
2371 * Changes in version 1.23:
2373 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2374 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2375 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2376 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2378 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2380 * Changes in version 1.22:
2382 --help option added.
2384 * Changes in version 1.20:
2386 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2390 Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2392 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2394 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2395 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2396 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2397 (at your option) any later version.
2399 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2400 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2401 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2402 GNU General Public License for more details.
2404 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2405 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2407 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2408 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2409 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2410 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2411 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2412 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2413 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2414 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2415 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2416 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2417 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2418 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2419 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2420 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2421 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2422 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2423 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2424 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2425 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts