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1 Bison News
2 ----------
3
4 * Changes in version 2.5.1_rc1 (2012-05-14):
5
6 ** Future changes:
7
8 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
9
10 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
11
12 ** glr.c improvements:
13
14 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
15
16 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
17 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
18
19 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
20
21 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
22 when -std is passed to GCC).
23
24 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
25
26 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
27 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
28
29 ** Changes for C++:
30
31 *** C++11 compatibility:
32
33 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
34 or higher.
35
36 *** Header guards
37
38 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
39 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
40
41 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
42 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
43 ...
44 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
45
46 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
47 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
48 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
49
50 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
51
52 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
53 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
54 ...
55 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
56
57 *** C++ locations:
58
59 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
60 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
61 documentation were fixed.
62
63 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
64
65 ** Changes in the manual:
66
67 *** %printer is documented
68
69 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
70 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
71
72 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
73 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
74
75 *** Several improvements have been made:
76
77 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
78 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
79 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
80 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
81
82 ** Building bison:
83
84 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
85
86 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
87 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
88
89 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
90
91 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
92
93 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
94 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
95
96 *** The install-pdf target work properly:
97
98 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
99 halts in the middle of its course.
100
101 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
102
103 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
104
105 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
106 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
107 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
108 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
109 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
110
111 ** Named references:
112
113 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
114 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
115 actions code.
116
117 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
118 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
119 as named references:
120
121 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
122 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
123
124 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
125
126 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
127 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
128
129 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
130 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
131 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
132
133 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
134 will help to stabilize them.
135
136 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
137
138 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
139 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
140 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
141 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
142 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
143 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
144 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
145 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
146 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
147
148 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
149 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
150 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
151 file with these directives:
152
153 %define lr.type lalr
154 %define lr.type ielr
155 %define lr.type canonical-lr
156
157 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
158 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
159 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
160 manual.
161
162 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
163 stabilize them.
164
165 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
166
167 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
168 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
169 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
170 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
171 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
172 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
173 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
174 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
175 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
176 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
177 tokens.
178
179 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
180 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
181 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
182 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
183 inconsistent states.
184
185 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
186 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
187 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
188 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
189 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
190 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
191 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
192 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
193 power.
194
195 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
196 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
197
198 %define parse.lac full
199
200 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
201 details including a few caveats.
202
203 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
204 stabilize it.
205
206 ** %define improvements:
207
208 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
209
210 Each of these command-line options
211
212 -D NAME[=VALUE]
213 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
214
215 -F NAME[=VALUE]
216 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
217
218 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
219
220 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
221
222 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
223 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
224 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
225 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
226
227 *** Variables renamed:
228
229 The following %define variables
230
231 api.push_pull
232 lr.keep_unreachable_states
233
234 have been renamed to
235
236 api.push-pull
237 lr.keep-unreachable-states
238
239 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
240 for backward compatibility.
241
242 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
243
244 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
245 within quotations marks. For example,
246
247 %define api.push-pull "push"
248
249 can be rewritten as
250
251 %define api.push-pull push
252
253 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
254
255 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
256
257 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
258
259 ** Character literals not of length one:
260
261 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
262 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
263 the following grammar to be the same token:
264
265 exp: exp '++'
266 | exp '+' exp
267 ;
268
269 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
270 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
271
272 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
273
274 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
275 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
276 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
277 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
278
279 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
280
281 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
282 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
283 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
284 and "last" members, instead of
285
286 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
287 do \
288 if (N) \
289 { \
290 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
291 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
292 } \
293 else \
294 { \
295 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
296 } \
297 while (false)
298
299 use:
300
301 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
302 do \
303 if (N) \
304 { \
305 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
306 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
307 } \
308 else \
309 { \
310 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
311 } \
312 while (false)
313
314 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
315
316 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
317 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
318 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
319 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
320
321 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
322
323 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
324 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
325 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
326 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
327 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
328 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
329 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
330 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
331
332 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
333
334 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
335 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
336 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
337 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
338
339 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
340
341 instead of
342
343 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
344
345 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
346 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
347 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
348 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
349 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
350 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
351 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
352
353 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
354
355 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
356 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
357 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
358 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
359 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
360
361 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
362 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
363 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
364 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
365 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
366 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
367 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
368 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
369 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
370 shifted or discarded.
371
372 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
373 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
374 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
375 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
376
377 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
378 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
379 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
380 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
381 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
382 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
383 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
384 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
385 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
386 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
387 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
388 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
389 by default.
390
391 ** Java skeleton fixes:
392
393 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
394
395 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
396 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
397
398 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
399
400 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
401
402 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
403
404 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
405 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
406
407 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
408
409 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
410
411 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
412 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
413 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
414 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
415 example:
416
417 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
418 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
419 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
420 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
421
422 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
423 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
424 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
425 then have no effect on the conflict report.
426
427 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
428
429 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
430 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
431
432 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
433
434 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
435
436 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
437 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
438 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
439 suppress all warnings:
440
441 bison -Wnone gram.y
442
443 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
444
445 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
446 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
447 produced an assertion failure. For example:
448
449 %left END 0
450
451 This bug has been fixed.
452
453 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
454
455 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
456 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
457
458 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
459 been fixed.
460
461 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
462
463 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
464 been fixed.
465
466 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
467 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
468 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
469 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
470
471 ** Minor documentation fixes.
472
473 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
474
475 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
476 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
477 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
478 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
479 affected platforms.
480
481 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
482
483 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
484 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
485 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
486 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
487 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
488 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
489 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
490 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
491 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
492
493 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
494
495 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
496 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
497 avoided.
498
499 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
500
501 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
502
503 %{CODE%}
504
505 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
506 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
507
508 %code {CODE}
509 %code requires {CODE}
510 %code provides {CODE}
511 %code top {CODE}
512
513 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
514 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
515 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
516 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
517 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
518
519 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
520 is still considered experimental.
521
522 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
523
524 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
525 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
526 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
527 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
528 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
529 specified by POSIX.
530
531 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
532 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
533 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
534 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
535 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
536 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
537 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
538
539 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
540
541 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
542 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
543 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
544 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
545 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
546 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
547 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
548 be removed altogether.
549
550 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
551 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
552 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
553 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
554 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
555 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
556 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
557 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
558 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
559 2.4.2 is not necessary.
560
561 ** Internationalization.
562
563 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
564 message translations were not installed although supported by the
565 host system.
566
567 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
568
569 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
570 declarations have been fixed.
571
572 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
573
574 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
575 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
576
577 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
578
579 instead of
580
581 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
582
583 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
584 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
585 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
586 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
587 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
588 feature.
589
590 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
591
592 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
593
594 ** %language is an experimental feature.
595
596 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
597 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
598 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
599 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
600 in future releases.
601
602 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
603
604 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
605 fixed.
606
607 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
608
609 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
610 are now deprecated:
611
612 %define NAME "VALUE"
613
614 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
615
616 %define api.pure
617
618 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
619 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
620
621 ** Push Parsing
622
623 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
624 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
625 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
626 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
627 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
628
629 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
630 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
631
632 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
633
634 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
635 feedback will help to stabilize it.
636
637 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
638 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
639 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
640
641 ** Java
642
643 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
644 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
645 %skeleton to select it.
646
647 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
648
649 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
650 feedback will help to stabilize it.
651
652 ** %language
653
654 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
655 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
656 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
657 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
658
659 ** XML Automaton Report
660
661 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
662 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
663 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
664
665 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
666 %defines. For example:
667
668 %defines "parser.h"
669
670 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
671 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
672 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
673 instead of "unused".
674
675 ** Unreachable State Removal
676
677 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
678 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
679 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
680
681 1. Removes unreachable states.
682
683 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
684 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
685 directives in existing grammar files.
686
687 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
688 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
689
690 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
691
692 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
693
694 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
695 for further discussion.
696
697 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
698
699 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
700 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
701 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
702 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
703 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
704 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
705 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
706 code.
707
708 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
709 name.
710
711 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
712 deprecated:
713
714 %file-prefix "parser"
715 %name-prefix "c_"
716 %output "parser.c"
717
718 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
719
720 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
721 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
722 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
723 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
724 it:
725
726 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
727 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
728 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
729 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
730
731 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
732 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
733 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
734 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
735
736 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
737 determine whether they should become permanent features.
738
739 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
740
741 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
742 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
743 about unused $2 in:
744
745 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
746
747 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
748 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
749
750 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
751
752 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
753 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
754 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
755
756 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
757 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
758
759 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
760
761 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
762 %printer's:
763
764 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
765 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
766 declared semantic type tags.
767
768 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
769 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
770 type tags.
771
772 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
773 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
774 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
775 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
776
777 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
778 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
779 features.
780
781 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
782 details.
783
784 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
785 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
786 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
787
788 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
789 completely removed from Bison.
790
791 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
792
793 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
794 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
795 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
796 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
797 and is required by POSIX.
798
799 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
800 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
801
802 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
803
804 For example:
805
806 %union { char *string; }
807 %token <string> STRING1
808 %token <string> STRING2
809 %type <string> string1
810 %type <string> string2
811 %union { char character; }
812 %token <character> CHR
813 %type <character> chr
814 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
815 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
816 %destructor { } <character>
817
818 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
819 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
820 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
821 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
822 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
823
824 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
825 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
826 future versions.]
827
828 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
829 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
830 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
831 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
832 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
833
834 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
835 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
836
837 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
838 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
839 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
840 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
841 declared after the first %union.
842
843 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
844 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
845 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
846 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
847 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
848 after the token definitions.
849
850 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
851 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
852
853 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
854 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
855 %after-header.
856
857 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
858 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
859 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
860 convenient for you:
861
862 %before-header {
863 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
864 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
865 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
866 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
867 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
868 }
869 %start-header {
870 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
871 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
872 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
873 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
874 }
875 %union {
876 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
877 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
878 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
879 }
880 %end-header {
881 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
882 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
883 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
884 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
885 * definitions. */
886 }
887 %after-header {
888 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
889 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
890 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
891 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
892 * Bison-generated definitions. */
893 }
894
895 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
896 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
897
898 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
899 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
900
901 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
902 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
903 in a future release.
904
905 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
906
907 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
908 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
909
910 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
911 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
912
913 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
914
915 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
916 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
917 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
918
919 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
920
921 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
922
923 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
924 their contents together.
925
926 ** New warning: unused values
927 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
928 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
929
930 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
931 | exp "+" exp
932 ;
933
934 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
935 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
936 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
937
938 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
939 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
940 | exp "+" exp
941 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
942 ;
943
944 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
945 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
946 values are used, e.g.:
947
948 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
949 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
950 ;
951
952 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
953 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
954
955 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
956
957 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
958 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
959
960 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
961 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
962 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
963 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
964
965 ** %expect, %expect-rr
966 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
967 instead of warnings.
968
969 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
970 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
971 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
972
973 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
974
975 ** %require "VERSION"
976 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
977 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
978
979 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
980 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
981 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
982 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
983 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
984
985 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
986 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
987 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
988 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
989
990 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
991 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
992
993 ** DJGPP support added.
994 \f
995 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
996
997 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
998
999 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1000 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1001 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1002 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1003 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1004 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1005
1006 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1007 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1008 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1009 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1010
1011 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1012 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1013 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1014
1015 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1016 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1017 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1018 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1019 unexpected "number"'.
1020 \f
1021 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1022
1023 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1024
1025 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1026 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1027 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1028 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1029 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1030
1031 - Error token location.
1032 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1033 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1034 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1035 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1036
1037 - Semicolon changes:
1038 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1039 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1040
1041 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1042 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1043 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1044 forget a closing quote.
1045
1046 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1047
1048 ** New features
1049
1050 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1051
1052 - New directive: %initial-action.
1053 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1054 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1055
1056 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1057 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1058
1059 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1060 This is a GNU extension.
1061
1062 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1063 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1064
1065 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1066
1067 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1068 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1069
1070 ** Bug fixes
1071
1072 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1073 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1074 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1075 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1076 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1077 these violations will become errors again.
1078
1079 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1080 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1081
1082 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1083 \f
1084 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1085
1086 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1087 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1088
1089 ** syntax error processing
1090
1091 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1092 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1093
1094 - %destructor
1095 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1096 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1097
1098 - %error-verbose
1099 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1100
1101 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1102 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1103
1104 ** POSIX conformance
1105
1106 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1107 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1108 compatibility with Yacc.
1109
1110 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1111 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1112 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1113 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1114 be consistent.
1115
1116 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1117 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1118
1119 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1120 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1121
1122 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1123 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1124
1125 - Yacc command and library now available
1126 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1127 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1128 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1129 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1130
1131 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1132
1133 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1134 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1135 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1136
1137 ** Other compatibility issues
1138
1139 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1140 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1141 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1142 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1143 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1144 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1145
1146 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1147 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1148
1149 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1150 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1151
1152 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1153 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1154 withdrawn in a future release.
1155
1156 ** GLR parser notes
1157
1158 - GLR and inline
1159 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1160 C keyword "inline".
1161
1162 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1163 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1164
1165 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1166 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1167 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1168
1169 ** #line in output files
1170 - --no-line works properly.
1171
1172 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1173 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1174 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1175 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1176 \f
1177 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1178
1179 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1180
1181 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1182
1183 ** GLR parsers
1184 Fix spurious parse errors.
1185
1186 ** Pure parsers
1187 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1188 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1189
1190 ** Type Clashes
1191 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1192 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1193
1194 untyped: ... typed;
1195
1196 but the converse remains an error:
1197
1198 typed: ... untyped;
1199
1200 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1201 The following code:
1202
1203 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1204
1205 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1206 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1207 \f
1208 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1209
1210 ** GLR parsing
1211 The declaration
1212 %glr-parser
1213 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1214 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1215 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1216 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1217
1218 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1219 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1220
1221 ** Output Directory
1222 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1223 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1224 now creates "bar.c".
1225
1226 ** Undefined token
1227 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1228 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1229
1230 ** Unknown token numbers
1231 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1232 no longer the case.
1233
1234 ** Error token
1235 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1236 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1237 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1238 will be mapped onto another number.
1239
1240 ** Verbose error messages
1241 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1242 error recovery is possible.
1243
1244 ** End token
1245 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1246
1247 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1248 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1249 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1250 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1251 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1252 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1253 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1254 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1255 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1256
1257 ** Traces
1258 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1259
1260 ** Larger grammars
1261 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1262 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1263 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1264 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1265
1266 ** Explicit initial rule
1267 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1268 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1269 graphs as rule 0.
1270
1271 ** Useless rules
1272 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1273 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1274
1275 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1276 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1277
1278 ** Rules never reduced
1279 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1280 reported.
1281
1282 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1283 On a grammar such as
1284
1285 %token useless useful
1286 %%
1287 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1288
1289 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1290 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1291
1292 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1293 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1294
1295 ** Default locations
1296 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1297 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1298 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1299 the computation of @$.
1300
1301 ** Token end-of-file
1302 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1303 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1304 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1305 For instance
1306 %token MYEOF 0
1307 or
1308 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1309
1310 ** Semantic parser
1311 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1312
1313 ** New translations
1314 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1315 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1316
1317 ** Incorrect token definitions
1318 When given
1319 %token 'a' "A"
1320 bison used to output
1321 #define 'a' 65
1322
1323 ** Token definitions as enums
1324 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1325 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1326 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1327
1328 ** Reports
1329 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1330 produces additional information:
1331 - itemset
1332 complete the core item sets with their closure
1333 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1334 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1335 - solved
1336 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1337 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1338 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1339
1340 ** Type clashes
1341 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1342 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1343
1344 %type <foo> bar
1345 %%
1346 bar: '0' {} '0';
1347
1348 This is fixed.
1349
1350 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1351 \f
1352 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1353
1354 ** C Skeleton
1355 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1356 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1357 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1358
1359 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1360 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1361 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1362 kludge will be disabled.
1363
1364 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1365 extended.
1366 \f
1367 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1368
1369 ** File name clashes are detected
1370 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1371 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1372
1373 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1374 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1375 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1376 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1377 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1378 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1379
1380 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1381 many portability hassles.
1382
1383 ** DJGPP support added.
1384
1385 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
1386 \f
1387 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1388
1389 ** Fix C++ issues
1390 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1391 under some conditions.
1392
1393 ** Catch invalid @n
1394 As is done with $n.
1395 \f
1396 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1397
1398 ** Fix Yacc output file names
1399
1400 ** Portability fixes
1401
1402 ** Italian, Dutch translations
1403 \f
1404 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1405
1406 ** Many Bug Fixes
1407
1408 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
1409 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1410 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1411 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1412 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
1413
1414 ** Use of alloca in parsers
1415 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1416 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1417
1418 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1419 problems as on AIX.
1420
1421 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1422
1423 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1424 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1425
1426 ** User Actions
1427 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1428 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1429 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1430
1431 ** Better C++ compliance
1432 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1433 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1434
1435 ** Reduced Grammars
1436 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1437
1438 ** 64 bit hosts
1439 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1440
1441 ** Error messages
1442 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1443
1444 ** %expect
1445 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1446 any warning.
1447
1448 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1449
1450 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1451
1452 ** Swedish translation
1453
1454 ** Parse errors
1455 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1456 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1457 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1458
1459 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1460 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1461 previous allocations were not freed.
1462
1463 ** Fixed verbose output file.
1464 Some newlines were missing.
1465 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1466
1467 ** Fixed conflict report.
1468 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1469
1470 ** %expect
1471 Was not used.
1472 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1473
1474 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1475
1476 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1477
1478 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1479
1480 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1481 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1482
1483 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1484
1485 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1486 New.
1487
1488 ** --output
1489 New, aliasing "--output-file".
1490 \f
1491 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1492
1493 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
1494 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
1495 argument.
1496
1497 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
1498 experiment.
1499
1500 ** Portability fixes.
1501 \f
1502 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1503
1504 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1505 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1506 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1507 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1508
1509 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
1510
1511 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1512
1513 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
1514
1515 ** Russian translation added.
1516
1517 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
1518
1519 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
1520
1521 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
1522
1523 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
1524
1525 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
1526
1527 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
1528 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
1529
1530 ** New directives.
1531 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
1532 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
1533
1534 ** @$
1535 Automatic location tracking.
1536 \f
1537 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
1538
1539 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
1540
1541 ** Added NLS.
1542
1543 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
1544
1545 ** There is now a FAQ.
1546 \f
1547 * Changes in version 1.27:
1548
1549 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
1550 some systems has been fixed.
1551 \f
1552 * Changes in version 1.26:
1553
1554 ** Bison now uses Automake.
1555
1556 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
1557
1558 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
1559
1560 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
1561
1562 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
1563
1564 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
1565
1566 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
1567 not provide alloca().
1568 \f
1569 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
1570
1571 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
1572 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
1573
1574 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
1575 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
1576 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
1577
1578 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
1579 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
1580 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
1581 purposes.
1582
1583 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
1584 directives in the parser file.
1585
1586 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
1587 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
1588
1589 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
1590 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
1591 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
1592 a switch statement body.
1593 \f
1594 * Changes in version 1.23:
1595
1596 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
1597 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
1598 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
1599 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
1600
1601 Line numbers in output file corrected.
1602 \f
1603 * Changes in version 1.22:
1604
1605 --help option added.
1606 \f
1607 * Changes in version 1.20:
1608
1609 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
1610
1611 -----
1612
1613 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1614
1615 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
1616
1617 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1618 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1619 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1620 (at your option) any later version.
1621
1622 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1623 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1624 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1625 GNU General Public License for more details.
1626
1627 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1628 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1629
1630 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
1631 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
1632 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
1633 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
1634 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
1635 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
1636 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
1637 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
1638 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
1639 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
1640 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
1641 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
1642 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
1643 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG
1644 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
1645 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ
1646
1647 Local Variables:
1648 mode: outline
1649 fill-column: 76
1650 End: