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1 GNU Bison NEWS
2
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
6
7 Bison will stop adding a semicolon at the end of the actions (as announced
8 in the release 2.5):
9
10 foo.y:2.22: warning: a ';' might be needed at the end of action code
11 exp: "num" { $$ = $1 }
12 ^
13 foo.y:2.22: future versions of Bison will not add the ';'
14
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.
18
19 ** Backward incompatible changes
20
21 *** Obsolete features
22
23 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
24
25 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
26 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
27
28 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
29 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
30
31 ** Bug fixes
32
33 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines
34
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:
39
40 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
41
42 This is has been fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
43 identifiers for user-provided variables.
44
45 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
46
47 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
48 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
49
50 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
51
52 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
53 Santet.
54
55 *** Carets
56
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).
60
61 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
62
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.
66
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):
70
71 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
72
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:
75
76 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
77
78 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
79
80 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
81 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
82
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".
86
87 *** The display of warnings is now richer
88
89 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
90
91 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
92
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].
96
97 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
98 with failure):
99
100 bison: warnings being treated as errors
101 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
102
103 it now reports:
104
105 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
106
107 *** Deprecated constructs
108
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.
112
113 *** Useless semantic types
114
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:
119
120 %token <type1> term
121 %type <type2> nterm
122 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
123 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
124 %%
125 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
126
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
129
130 *** Undefined but unused symbols
131
132 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
133 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
134
135 %printer {} symbol1
136 %destructor {} symbol2
137 %type <type> symbol3
138 %%
139 exp: "a";
140
141 *** Useless destructors or printers
142
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.
147
148 %token <type1> token1
149 <type2> token2
150 <type3> token3
151 <type4> token4
152 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
153 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
154
155 *** Conflicts
156
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:
159
160 %glr-parser
161 %%
162 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
163
164 compare the previous version of bison:
165
166 $ bison foo.y
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
171
172 with the new behavior:
173
174 $ bison foo.y
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]
180
181 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
182
183 %expect 0
184 %glr-parser
185 %%
186 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
187
188 Former behavior:
189
190 $ bison bar.y
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
194
195 New one:
196
197 $ bison bar.y
198 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
199 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
200
201 *** Useless precedence
202
203 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence but no declared
204 associativity (i.e. declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
205 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
206 instead, without modifying the parsing tables.
207
208 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
209
210 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
211 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
212 or more arguments. Instead of
213
214 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
215 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
216 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
217 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
218
219 one may now declare
220
221 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
222
223 ** Java skeleton improvements
224
225 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
226
227 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
228 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
229 and "%define init_throws".
230
231 ** C++ skeletons improvements
232
233 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
234
235 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
236 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
237 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
238
239 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
240
241 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
242
243 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
244
245 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
246 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
247 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
248 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
249 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
250 factory invoked by the user actions).
251
252 ** Renamed %define variables
253
254 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
255 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
256
257 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
258 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
259 namespace -> api.namespace
260 stype -> api.value.type
261
262 ** Variable api.token.prefix
263
264 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
265 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
266 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
267
268 %token FILE for ERROR
269 %define api.token.prefix "TOK_"
270 %%
271 start: FILE for ERROR;
272
273 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
274 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
275 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
276 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
277
278 ** Variable parse.error
279
280 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
281 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
282 verbose".
283
284 ** Semantic predicates
285
286 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
287
288 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
289 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
290 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
291 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
292 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
293 expressions.
294
295 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
296
297 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
298 reduce/reduce conflicts.
299
300 ** Token numbering has changed to preserve the user-defined order
301
302 When declaring %token A B, the numbering for A is inferior to B. Up to now,
303 when declaring associativity at the same time, with %left (or %right,
304 %precedence, %nonassoc), B was inferior to A.
305
306 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
307
308 ** Bug fixes
309
310 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
311
312 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
313
314 ** Diagnostics are improved
315
316 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
317
318 *** Changes in the format of error messages
319
320 This used to be the format of many error reports:
321
322 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
323 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
324
325 It is now:
326
327 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
328 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
329
330 *** New format for error reports: carets
331
332 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
333
334 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
335 %type <sval> exp
336 ^^^^^^
337 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
338 %type <ival> exp
339 ^^^^^^
340
341 or
342
343 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
344 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
345 ^^^^
346 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
347 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
348 ^^^
349 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
350 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
351 ^^^
352 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
353 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
354 ^^^
355
356 The default behaviour for now is still not to display these unless
357 explictly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
358 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
359 -fno-caret).
360
361 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
362
363 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
364 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
365 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
366 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
367 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
368 parsers).
369
370 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
371 "%define api.pure full".
372
373 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
374
375 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
376 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
377 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
378 then responsible to define her type.
379
380 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
381 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
382 them.
383
384 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
385 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
386 compatibility).
387
388 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
389 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
390 api.position.type.
391
392 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
393
394 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
395 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
396 before re-throwing the exception.
397
398 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
399 appreciated.
400
401 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
402
403 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
404
405 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
406 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
407 numbered and left-justified.
408
409 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
410 diamond shaped nodes.
411
412 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
413 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
414
415 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
416
417 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
418 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
419
420 ** Documentation
421
422 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
423 have been fixed and extended.
424
425 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
426 were not properly documented.
427
428 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
429
430 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
431
432 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
433 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
434 reporting them to us.
435
436 ** Bug fixes
437
438 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
439 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
440 3.2.
441
442 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
443
444 Nul characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
445
446 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
447 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
448
449 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
450
451 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
452
453 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
454
455 ** Bug fixes
456
457 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
458
459 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
460 users to the appropriate place to report them.
461
462 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
463
464 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
465 generated, are removed.
466
467 All the generated headers are self-contained.
468
469 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
470
471 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
472 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
473 For instance the header generated from
474
475 %define api.prefix "calc"
476 %defines "lib/parse.h"
477
478 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
479
480 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
481
482 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
483 warnings such as:
484
485 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
486 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
487 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
488 *++yyvsp = yylval;
489 ^
490
491 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
492
493 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
494 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
495 addressed.
496
497 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
498
499 ** Bug fixes
500
501 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
502 suite have been fixed.
503
504 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
505
506 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
507 invalid C++. This is fixed.
508
509 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
510
511 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
512
513 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
514
515 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
516
517 ** Future Changes
518
519 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
520 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
521 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
522
523 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
524
525 write:
526
527 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
528
529 ** Bug fixes
530
531 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
532
533 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
534
535 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
536
537 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
538 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
539 now does.
540
541 ** Type names in actions
542
543 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
544 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
545
546 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
547
548 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
549 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
550
551 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
552
553 ** Future changes
554
555 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
556 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
557
558 *** K&R C parsers
559
560 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
561 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
562 compilers.
563
564 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
565
566 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
567 YYLTYPE.
568
569 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
570 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
571
572 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
573 %error-verbose.
574
575 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
576
577 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
578 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
579 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
580 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
581 it.
582
583 ** Generated Parser Headers
584
585 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
586
587 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
588 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
589
590 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
591 # define YY_FOO_H
592 ...
593 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
594
595 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
596
597 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
598 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
599
600 int bar_parse (void);
601
602 rather than
603
604 #define yyparse bar_parse
605 int yyparse (void);
606
607 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
608 single compilation unit.
609
610 *** Exported symbols in C++
611
612 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
613 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
614 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
615
616 *** YYLSP_NEEDED
617
618 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
619 longer defined.
620
621 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
622
623 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
624 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
625 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
626 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
627 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
628 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
629 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
630
631 The following examples compares both:
632
633 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
634 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
635 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
636 %% %%
637 exp: 'a'; exp: 'a';
638
639 bison generates:
640
641 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
642 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
643
644 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
645 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
646 > # if defined YYDEBUG
647 > # if YYDEBUG
648 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
649 > # else
650 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
651 > # endif
652 > # else
653 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
654 > # endif
655 # endif | # endif
656
657 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
658 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
659 # endif # endif
660
661 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
662 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
663 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
664 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
665 FOO = 258 FOO = 258
666 }; };
667 # endif # endif
668
669 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
670 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
671 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
672 { {
673 int ival; int ival;
674 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
675 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
676 #endif #endif
677
678 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
679
680 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
681
682 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
683
684 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
685
686 ** Future changes:
687
688 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
689
690 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
691
692 ** glr.c improvements:
693
694 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
695
696 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
697 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
698
699 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
700
701 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
702 when -std is passed to GCC).
703
704 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
705
706 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
707 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
708
709 ** Changes for C++:
710
711 *** C++11 compatibility:
712
713 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
714 or higher.
715
716 *** Header guards
717
718 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
719 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
720
721 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
722 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
723 ...
724 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
725
726 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
727 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
728 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
729
730 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
731
732 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
733 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
734 ...
735 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
736
737 *** C++ locations:
738
739 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
740 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
741 documentation were fixed.
742
743 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
744
745 ** Changes in the manual:
746
747 *** %printer is documented
748
749 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
750 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
751
752 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
753 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
754
755 *** Several improvements have been made:
756
757 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
758 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
759 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
760 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
761
762 ** Building bison:
763
764 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
765
766 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
767 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
768
769 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
770
771 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
772
773 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
774 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
775
776 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
777
778 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
779 halts in the middle of its course.
780
781 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
782
783 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
784
785 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
786 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
787 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
788 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
789 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
790
791 ** Named references:
792
793 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
794 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
795 actions code.
796
797 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
798 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
799 as named references:
800
801 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
802 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
803
804 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
805
806 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
807 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
808
809 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
810 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
811 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
812
813 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
814 will help to stabilize them.
815 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
816
817 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
818
819 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
820 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
821 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
822 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
823 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
824 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
825 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
826 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
827 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
828
829 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
830 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
831 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
832 file with these directives:
833
834 %define lr.type lalr
835 %define lr.type ielr
836 %define lr.type canonical-lr
837
838 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
839 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
840 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
841 manual.
842
843 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
844 stabilize them.
845
846 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
847
848 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
849
850 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
851 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
852 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
853 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
854 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
855 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
856 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
857 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
858 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
859 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
860 tokens.
861
862 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
863 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
864 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
865 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
866 inconsistent states.
867
868 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
869 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
870 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
871 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
872 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
873 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
874 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
875 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
876 power.
877
878 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
879 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
880
881 %define parse.lac full
882
883 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
884 details including a few caveats.
885
886 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
887 stabilize it.
888
889 ** %define improvements:
890
891 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
892
893 Each of these command-line options
894
895 -D NAME[=VALUE]
896 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
897
898 -F NAME[=VALUE]
899 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
900
901 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
902
903 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
904
905 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
906 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
907 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
908 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
909
910 *** Variables renamed:
911
912 The following %define variables
913
914 api.push_pull
915 lr.keep_unreachable_states
916
917 have been renamed to
918
919 api.push-pull
920 lr.keep-unreachable-states
921
922 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
923 for backward compatibility.
924
925 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
926
927 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
928 within quotations marks. For example,
929
930 %define api.push-pull "push"
931
932 can be rewritten as
933
934 %define api.push-pull push
935
936 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
937
938 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
939
940 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
941
942 ** Character literals not of length one:
943
944 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
945 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
946 the following grammar to be the same token:
947
948 exp: exp '++'
949 | exp '+' exp
950 ;
951
952 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
953 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
954
955 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
956
957 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
958 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
959 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
960 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
961
962 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
963
964 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
965 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
966 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
967 and "last" members, instead of
968
969 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
970 do \
971 if (N) \
972 { \
973 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
974 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
975 } \
976 else \
977 { \
978 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
979 } \
980 while (false)
981
982 use:
983
984 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
985 do \
986 if (N) \
987 { \
988 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
989 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
990 } \
991 else \
992 { \
993 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
994 } \
995 while (false)
996
997 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
998
999 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1000 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1001 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1002 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1003
1004 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1005
1006 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1007 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1008 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1009 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1010 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1011 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1012 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1013 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1014
1015 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1016
1017 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1018 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1019 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1020 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1021
1022 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1023
1024 instead of
1025
1026 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1027
1028 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1029 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1030 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1031 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1032 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1033 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1034 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1035
1036 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1037
1038 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1039 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1040 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1041 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1042 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1043
1044 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1045 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1046 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1047 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1048 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1049 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1050 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1051 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1052 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1053 shifted or discarded.
1054
1055 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1056 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1057 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1058 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1059
1060 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1061 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1062 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1063 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1064 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1065 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1066 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1067 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1068 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1069 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1070 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1071 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1072 by default.
1073
1074 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1075
1076 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1077
1078 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1079 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1080
1081 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1082
1083 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1084
1085 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1086
1087 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1088 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1089
1090 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1091
1092 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1093
1094 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1095 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1096 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1097 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1098 example:
1099
1100 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1101 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1102 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1103 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1104
1105 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1106 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1107 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1108 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1109
1110 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1111
1112 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1113 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1114
1115 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1116
1117 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1118
1119 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1120 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1121 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1122 suppress all warnings:
1123
1124 bison -Wnone gram.y
1125
1126 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1127
1128 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1129 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1130 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1131
1132 %left END 0
1133
1134 This bug has been fixed.
1135
1136 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1137
1138 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1139 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1140
1141 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1142 been fixed.
1143
1144 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1145
1146 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1147 been fixed.
1148
1149 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1150 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1151 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1152 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1153
1154 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1155
1156 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1157
1158 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1159 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1160 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1161 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1162 affected platforms.
1163
1164 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1165
1166 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1167 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1168 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1169 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1170 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1171 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1172 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1173 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1174 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1175
1176 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1177
1178 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1179 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1180 avoided.
1181
1182 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1183
1184 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1185
1186 %{CODE%}
1187
1188 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1189 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1190
1191 %code {CODE}
1192 %code requires {CODE}
1193 %code provides {CODE}
1194 %code top {CODE}
1195
1196 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1197 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1198 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1199 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1200 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1201
1202 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1203 is still considered experimental.
1204
1205 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1206
1207 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1208 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1209 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1210 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1211 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1212 specified by POSIX.
1213
1214 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1215 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1216 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1217 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1218 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1219 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1220 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1221
1222 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1223
1224 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1225 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1226 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1227 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1228 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1229 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1230 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1231 be removed altogether.
1232
1233 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1234 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1235 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1236 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1237 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1238 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1239 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1240 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1241 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1242 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1243
1244 ** Internationalization.
1245
1246 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1247 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1248 host system.
1249
1250 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1251
1252 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1253 declarations have been fixed.
1254
1255 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1256
1257 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1258 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1259
1260 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1261
1262 instead of
1263
1264 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1265
1266 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1267 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1268 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1269 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1270 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1271 feature.
1272
1273 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1274
1275 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1276
1277 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1278
1279 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1280 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1281 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1282 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1283 in future releases.
1284
1285 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1286
1287 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1288 fixed.
1289
1290 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1291
1292 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1293 are now deprecated:
1294
1295 %define NAME "VALUE"
1296
1297 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1298
1299 %define api.pure
1300
1301 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1302 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1303
1304 ** Push Parsing
1305
1306 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1307 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1308 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1309 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1310 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1311
1312 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1313 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1314
1315 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1316
1317 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1318 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1319
1320 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1321 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1322 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1323
1324 ** Java
1325
1326 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1327 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1328 %skeleton to select it.
1329
1330 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1331
1332 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1333 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1334 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1335
1336 ** %language
1337
1338 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1339 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1340 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1341 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1342
1343 ** XML Automaton Report
1344
1345 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1346 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1347 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1348 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1349
1350 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1351 %defines. For example:
1352
1353 %defines "parser.h"
1354
1355 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1356 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1357 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1358 instead of "unused".
1359
1360 ** Unreachable State Removal
1361
1362 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1363 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1364 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1365
1366 1. Removes unreachable states.
1367
1368 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1369 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1370 directives in existing grammar files.
1371
1372 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1373 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1374
1375 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1376
1377 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1378
1379 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1380 for further discussion.
1381
1382 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1383
1384 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1385 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1386 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1387 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1388 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1389 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1390 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1391 code.
1392
1393 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1394 name.
1395
1396 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1397 deprecated:
1398
1399 %file-prefix "parser"
1400 %name-prefix "c_"
1401 %output "parser.c"
1402
1403 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1404
1405 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1406 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1407 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1408 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1409 it:
1410
1411 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1412 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1413 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1414 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1415
1416 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1417 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1418 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1419 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1420
1421 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1422 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1423
1424 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1425
1426 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1427 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1428 about unused $2 in:
1429
1430 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1431
1432 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1433 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1434
1435 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1436
1437 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1438 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1439 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1440
1441 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1442 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1443
1444 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1445
1446 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1447 %printer's:
1448
1449 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1450 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1451 declared semantic type tags.
1452
1453 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1454 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1455 type tags.
1456
1457 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1458 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1459 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1460 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1461
1462 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1463 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1464 features.
1465
1466 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1467 details.
1468
1469 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1470 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1471 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1472
1473 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1474 completely removed from Bison.
1475
1476 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1477
1478 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1479 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1480 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1481 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1482 and is required by POSIX.
1483
1484 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1485 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1486
1487 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1488
1489 For example:
1490
1491 %union { char *string; }
1492 %token <string> STRING1
1493 %token <string> STRING2
1494 %type <string> string1
1495 %type <string> string2
1496 %union { char character; }
1497 %token <character> CHR
1498 %type <character> chr
1499 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1500 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1501 %destructor { } <character>
1502
1503 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1504 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1505 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1506 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1507 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1508
1509 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1510 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1511 future versions.]
1512
1513 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1514 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1515 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1516 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1517 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1518
1519 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1520 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1521
1522 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1523 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1524 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1525 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1526 declared after the first %union.
1527
1528 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1529 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1530 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1531 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1532 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1533 after the token definitions.
1534
1535 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1536 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1537
1538 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1539 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1540 %after-header.
1541
1542 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1543 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1544 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1545 convenient for you:
1546
1547 %before-header {
1548 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1549 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1550 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1551 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1552 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1553 }
1554 %start-header {
1555 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1556 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1557 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1558 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1559 }
1560 %union {
1561 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1562 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1563 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1564 }
1565 %end-header {
1566 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1567 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1568 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1569 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1570 * definitions. */
1571 }
1572 %after-header {
1573 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1574 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1575 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1576 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1577 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1578 }
1579
1580 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1581 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1582
1583 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1584 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1585
1586 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1587 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1588 in a future release.
1589
1590 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1591
1592 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1593 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1594
1595 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1596 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1597
1598 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1599
1600 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1601 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1602 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1603
1604 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1605
1606 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1607
1608 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1609 their contents together.
1610
1611 ** New warning: unused values
1612 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1613 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1614
1615 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1616 | exp "+" exp
1617 ;
1618
1619 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1620 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1621 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1622
1623 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1624 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1625 | exp "+" exp
1626 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1627 ;
1628
1629 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1630 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1631 values are used, e.g.:
1632
1633 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1634 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1635 ;
1636
1637 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1638 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1639
1640 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1641
1642 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1643 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1644
1645 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1646 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1647 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1648 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1649
1650 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1651 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1652 instead of warnings.
1653
1654 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1655 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1656 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1657
1658 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1659
1660 ** %require "VERSION"
1661 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1662 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1663
1664 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1665 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1666 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1667 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1668 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1669
1670 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1671 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1672 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1673 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1674
1675 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1676 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1677
1678 ** DJGPP support added.
1679 \f
1680 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1681
1682 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1683
1684 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1685 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1686 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1687 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1688 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1689 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1690
1691 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1692 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1693 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1694 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1695
1696 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1697 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1698 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1699
1700 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1701 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1702 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1703 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1704 unexpected "number"'.
1705 \f
1706 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1707
1708 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1709
1710 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1711 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1712 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1713 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1714 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1715
1716 - Error token location.
1717 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1718 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1719 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1720 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1721
1722 - Semicolon changes:
1723 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1724 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1725
1726 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1727 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1728 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1729 forget a closing quote.
1730
1731 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1732
1733 ** New features
1734
1735 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1736
1737 - New directive: %initial-action.
1738 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1739 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1740
1741 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1742 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1743
1744 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1745 This is a GNU extension.
1746
1747 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1748 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1749
1750 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1751
1752 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1753 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1754
1755 ** Bug fixes
1756
1757 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1758 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1759 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1760 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1761 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1762 these violations will become errors again.
1763
1764 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1765 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1766
1767 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1768 \f
1769 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1770
1771 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1772 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1773
1774 ** syntax error processing
1775
1776 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1777 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1778
1779 - %destructor
1780 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1781 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1782
1783 - %error-verbose
1784 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1785
1786 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1787 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1788
1789 ** POSIX conformance
1790
1791 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1792 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1793 compatibility with Yacc.
1794
1795 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1796 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1797 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1798 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1799 be consistent.
1800
1801 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1802 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1803
1804 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1805 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1806
1807 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1808 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1809
1810 - Yacc command and library now available
1811 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1812 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1813 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1814 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1815
1816 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1817
1818 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1819 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1820 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1821
1822 ** Other compatibility issues
1823
1824 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1825 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1826 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1827 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1828 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1829 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1830
1831 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1832 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1833
1834 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1835 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1836
1837 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1838 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1839 withdrawn in a future release.
1840
1841 ** GLR parser notes
1842
1843 - GLR and inline
1844 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1845 C keyword "inline".
1846
1847 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1848 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1849
1850 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1851 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1852 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1853 shortcomings:
1854
1855 - a single argument only can be added,
1856 - their types are weak (void *),
1857 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1858 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1859
1860 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1861 For instance:
1862
1863 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1864 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1865 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1866
1867 results in the following signatures:
1868
1869 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1870 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1871
1872 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1873
1874 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1875 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1876
1877 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1878 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1879 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1880
1881 ** #line in output files
1882 - --no-line works properly.
1883
1884 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1885 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1886 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1887 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1888 \f
1889 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1890
1891 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1892
1893 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1894
1895 ** GLR parsers
1896 Fix spurious parse errors.
1897
1898 ** Pure parsers
1899 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1900 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1901
1902 ** Type Clashes
1903 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1904 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1905
1906 untyped: ... typed;
1907
1908 but the converse remains an error:
1909
1910 typed: ... untyped;
1911
1912 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1913 The following code:
1914
1915 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1916
1917 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1918 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1919 \f
1920 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1921
1922 ** GLR parsing
1923 The declaration
1924 %glr-parser
1925 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1926 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1927 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1928 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1929
1930 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1931 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1932
1933 ** Output Directory
1934 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1935 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1936 now creates "bar.c".
1937
1938 ** Undefined token
1939 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1940 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1941
1942 ** Unknown token numbers
1943 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1944 no longer the case.
1945
1946 ** Error token
1947 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1948 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1949 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1950 will be mapped onto another number.
1951
1952 ** Verbose error messages
1953 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1954 error recovery is possible.
1955
1956 ** End token
1957 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1958
1959 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1960 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1961 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1962 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1963 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1964 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1965 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1966 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1967 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1968
1969 ** Traces
1970 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1971
1972 ** Larger grammars
1973 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1974 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1975 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1976 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1977
1978 ** Explicit initial rule
1979 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1980 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1981 graphs as rule 0.
1982
1983 ** Useless rules
1984 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1985 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1986
1987 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1988 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1989
1990 ** Rules never reduced
1991 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1992 reported.
1993
1994 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1995 On a grammar such as
1996
1997 %token useless useful
1998 %%
1999 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2000
2001 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2002 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2003
2004 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2005 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2006
2007 ** Default locations
2008 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2009 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2010 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2011 the computation of @$.
2012
2013 ** Token end-of-file
2014 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2015 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2016 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2017 For instance
2018 %token MYEOF 0
2019 or
2020 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2021
2022 ** Semantic parser
2023 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2024
2025 ** New translations
2026 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2027 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2028
2029 ** Incorrect token definitions
2030 When given
2031 %token 'a' "A"
2032 bison used to output
2033 #define 'a' 65
2034
2035 ** Token definitions as enums
2036 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2037 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2038 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2039
2040 ** Reports
2041 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2042 produces additional information:
2043 - itemset
2044 complete the core item sets with their closure
2045 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2046 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2047 - solved
2048 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2049 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2050 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2051
2052 ** Type clashes
2053 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2054 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2055
2056 %type <foo> bar
2057 %%
2058 bar: '0' {} '0';
2059
2060 This is fixed.
2061
2062 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2063 \f
2064 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2065
2066 ** C Skeleton
2067 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2068 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2069 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2070
2071 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2072 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2073 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2074 kludge will be disabled.
2075
2076 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2077 extended.
2078 \f
2079 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2080
2081 ** File name clashes are detected
2082 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2083 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2084
2085 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2086 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2087 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2088 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2089 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2090 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2091
2092 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2093 many portability hassles.
2094
2095 ** DJGPP support added.
2096
2097 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2098 \f
2099 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2100
2101 ** Fix C++ issues
2102 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2103 under some conditions.
2104
2105 ** Catch invalid @n
2106 As is done with $n.
2107 \f
2108 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2109
2110 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2111
2112 ** Portability fixes
2113
2114 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2115 \f
2116 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2117
2118 ** Many Bug Fixes
2119
2120 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2121 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2122 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2123 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2124 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2125
2126 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2127 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2128 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2129
2130 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2131 problems as on AIX.
2132
2133 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2134
2135 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2136 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2137
2138 ** User Actions
2139 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2140 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2141 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2142
2143 ** Better C++ compliance
2144 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2145 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2146
2147 ** Reduced Grammars
2148 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2149
2150 ** 64 bit hosts
2151 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2152
2153 ** Error messages
2154 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2155
2156 ** %expect
2157 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2158 any warning.
2159
2160 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2161
2162 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2163
2164 ** Swedish translation
2165
2166 ** Parse errors
2167 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2168 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2169 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2170
2171 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2172 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2173 previous allocations were not freed.
2174
2175 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2176 Some newlines were missing.
2177 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2178
2179 ** Fixed conflict report.
2180 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2181
2182 ** %expect
2183 Was not used.
2184 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2185
2186 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2187
2188 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2189
2190 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2191
2192 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2193 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2194
2195 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2196
2197 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2198 New.
2199
2200 ** --output
2201 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2202 \f
2203 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2204
2205 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2206 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2207 argument.
2208
2209 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2210 experiment.
2211
2212 ** Portability fixes.
2213 \f
2214 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2215
2216 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2217 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2218 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2219 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2220
2221 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2222
2223 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2224
2225 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2226
2227 ** Russian translation added.
2228
2229 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2230
2231 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2232
2233 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2234
2235 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2236
2237 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2238
2239 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2240 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2241
2242 ** New directives.
2243 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2244 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2245
2246 ** @$
2247 Automatic location tracking.
2248 \f
2249 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2250
2251 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2252
2253 ** Added NLS.
2254
2255 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2256
2257 ** There is now a FAQ.
2258 \f
2259 * Changes in version 1.27:
2260
2261 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2262 some systems has been fixed.
2263 \f
2264 * Changes in version 1.26:
2265
2266 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2267
2268 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2269
2270 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2271
2272 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2273
2274 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2275
2276 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2277
2278 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2279 not provide alloca().
2280 \f
2281 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2282
2283 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2284 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2285
2286 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2287 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2288 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2289
2290 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2291 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2292 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2293 purposes.
2294
2295 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2296 directives in the parser file.
2297
2298 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2299 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2300
2301 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2302 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2303 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2304 a switch statement body.
2305 \f
2306 * Changes in version 1.23:
2307
2308 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2309 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2310 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2311 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2312
2313 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2314 \f
2315 * Changes in version 1.22:
2316
2317 --help option added.
2318 \f
2319 * Changes in version 1.20:
2320
2321 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2322
2323 -----
2324
2325 Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2326
2327 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2328
2329 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2330 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2331 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2332 (at your option) any later version.
2333
2334 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2335 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2336 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2337 GNU General Public License for more details.
2338
2339 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2340 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2341
2342 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2343 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2344 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2345 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2346 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2347 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2348 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2349 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2350 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2351 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2352 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2353 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2354 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2355 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2356 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2357 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2358 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2359 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2360 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts
2361
2362 Local Variables:
2363 mode: outline
2364 fill-column: 76
2365 End: