3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
6 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.4 (2015-01-23) [stable]
10 *** C++ with Variants (lalr1.cc)
12 Fix a compiler warning when no %destructor use $$.
16 Several portability issues in tests were fixed.
18 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.3 (2015-01-15) [stable]
22 *** C++ with Variants (lalr1.cc)
24 Problems with %destructor and '%define parse.assert' have been fixed.
26 *** Named %union support (yacc.c, glr.c)
28 Bison 3.0 introduced a regression on named %union such as
30 %union foo { int ival; };
32 The possibility to use a name was introduced "for Yacc compatibility".
33 It is however not required by POSIX Yacc, and its usefulness is not clear.
35 *** %define api.value.type union with %defines (yacc.c, glr.c)
37 The C parsers were broken when %defines was used together with "%define
38 api.value.type union".
40 *** Redeclarations are reported in proper order
50 /tmp/foo.yy:2.10-11: error: %printer redeclaration for FOO
53 /tmp/foo.yy:3.10-11: previous declaration
57 Now, the "previous" declaration is always the first one.
62 Bison now installs various files in its docdir (which defaults to
63 '/usr/local/share/doc/bison'), including the three fully blown examples
64 extracted from the documentation:
67 Reverse polish calculator, a simple introductory example.
69 Multi-function Calc, a calculator with memory and functions and located
72 a calculator in C++ using variant support and token constructors.
74 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.2 (2013-12-05) [stable]
78 *** Generated source files when errors are reported
80 When warnings are issued and -Werror is set, bison would still generate
81 the source files (*.c, *.h...). As a consequence, some runs of "make"
82 could fail the first time, but not the second (as the files were generated
85 This is fixed: bison no longer generates this source files, but, of
86 course, still produces the various reports (*.output, *.xml, etc.).
88 *** %empty is used in reports
90 Empty right-hand sides are denoted by '%empty' in all the reports (text,
91 dot, XML and formats derived from it).
93 *** YYERROR and variants
95 When C++ variant support is enabled, an error triggered via YYERROR, but
96 not caught via error recovery, resulted in a double deletion.
98 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.1 (2013-11-12) [stable]
102 *** Errors in caret diagnostics
104 On some platforms, some errors could result in endless diagnostics.
106 *** Fixes of the -Werror option
108 Options such as "-Werror -Wno-error=foo" were still turning "foo"
109 diagnostics into errors instead of warnings. This is fixed.
111 Actually, for consistency with GCC, "-Wno-error=foo -Werror" now also
112 leaves "foo" diagnostics as warnings. Similarly, with "-Werror=foo
113 -Wno-error", "foo" diagnostics are now errors.
117 As demonstrated in the documentation, one can now leave spaces between
122 The yacc.1 man page is no longer installed if --disable-yacc was
125 *** Fixes in the test suite
127 Bugs and portability issues.
129 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0 (2013-07-25) [stable]
131 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
133 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
134 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
135 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
137 ** Backward incompatible changes
139 *** Obsolete features
141 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
143 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
144 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
146 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
147 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
149 Missing semicolons at the end of actions are no longer added (as announced
152 *** Use of YACC='bison -y'
154 TL;DR: With Autoconf <= 2.69, pass -Wno-yacc to (AM_)YFLAGS if you use
157 Traditional Yacc generates 'y.tab.c' whatever the name of the input file.
158 Therefore Makefiles written for Yacc expect 'y.tab.c' (and possibly
159 'y.tab.h' and 'y.outout') to be generated from 'foo.y'.
161 To this end, for ages, AC_PROG_YACC, Autoconf's macro to look for an
162 implementation of Yacc, was using Bison as 'bison -y'. While it does
163 ensure compatible output file names, it also enables warnings for
164 incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc. In other words, 'bison -y' triggers
165 warnings for Bison extensions.
167 Autoconf 2.70+ fixes this incompatibility by using YACC='bison -o y.tab.c'
168 (which also generates 'y.tab.h' and 'y.output' when needed).
169 Alternatively, disable Yacc warnings by passing '-Wno-yacc' to your Yacc
170 flags (YFLAGS, or AM_YFLAGS with Automake).
174 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
176 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
177 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
178 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
179 preprocessor expansion:
181 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
183 This is fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
184 identifiers for user-provided variables.
186 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
188 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
189 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
191 *** Warnings about useless %pure-parser/%define api.pure are restored
193 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
195 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
200 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
201 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
202 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
204 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
205 the caret information only. For instance on:
212 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
213 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
217 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
218 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
222 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
224 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
225 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
227 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
229 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
230 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
231 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
233 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
234 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
235 errors (and only those):
237 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
239 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
240 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
242 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
244 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
246 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
247 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
249 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
250 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
251 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
253 *** The display of warnings is now richer
255 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
257 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
259 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
260 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
261 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
263 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
266 bison: warnings being treated as errors
267 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
271 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
273 *** Deprecated constructs
275 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
276 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
277 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
279 *** Useless semantic types
281 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
282 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
283 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
284 types that trigger the warning:
288 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
289 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
291 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
293 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
294 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
296 *** Undefined but unused symbols
298 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
299 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
302 %destructor {} symbol2
307 *** Useless destructors or printers
309 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
310 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
311 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
312 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
314 %token <type1> token1
318 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
319 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
323 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
324 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
328 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
330 compare the previous version of bison:
333 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
334 $ bison -Werror foo.y
335 bison: warnings being treated as errors
336 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
338 with the new behavior:
341 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
342 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
343 $ bison -Werror foo.y
344 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
345 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
347 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
352 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
357 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
358 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
359 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
364 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
365 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
367 ** Incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc
369 The 'yacc' category is no longer part of '-Wall', enable it explicitly
372 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
374 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
375 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
376 or more arguments. Instead of
378 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
379 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
380 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
381 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
385 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
387 ** Types of values for %define variables
389 Bison used to make no difference between '%define foo bar' and '%define
390 foo "bar"'. The former is now called a 'keyword value', and the latter a
391 'string value'. A third kind was added: 'code values', such as '%define
394 Keyword variables are used for fixed value sets, e.g.,
398 Code variables are used for value in the target language, e.g.,
400 %define api.value.type {struct semantic_type}
402 String variables are used remaining cases, e.g. file names.
404 ** Variable api.token.prefix
406 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
407 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
408 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
410 %token FILE for ERROR
411 %define api.token.prefix {TOK_}
413 start: FILE for ERROR;
415 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
416 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
417 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
418 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
420 ** Variable api.value.type
422 This new %define variable supersedes the #define macro YYSTYPE. The use
423 of YYSTYPE is discouraged. In particular, #defining YYSTYPE *and* either
424 using %union or %defining api.value.type results in undefined behavior.
426 Either define api.value.type, or use "%union":
433 %token <ival> INT "integer"
434 %token <sval> STRING "string"
435 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <ival>
436 %destructor { free ($$); } <sval>
439 yylval.ival = 42; return INT;
440 yylval.sval = "42"; return STRING;
442 The %define variable api.value.type supports both keyword and code values.
444 The keyword value 'union' means that the user provides genuine types, not
445 union member names such as "ival" and "sval" above (WARNING: will fail if
446 -y/--yacc/%yacc is enabled).
448 %define api.value.type union
449 %token <int> INT "integer"
450 %token <char *> STRING "string"
451 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <int>
452 %destructor { free ($$); } <char *>
455 yylval.INT = 42; return INT;
456 yylval.STRING = "42"; return STRING;
458 The keyword value variant is somewhat equivalent, but for C++ special
459 provision is made to allow classes to be used (more about this below).
461 %define api.value.type variant
462 %token <int> INT "integer"
463 %token <std::string> STRING "string"
465 Code values (in braces) denote user defined types. This is where YYSTYPE
483 %define api.value.type {struct my_value}
484 %token <u.ival> INT "integer"
485 %token <u.sval> STRING "string"
486 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <u.ival>
487 %destructor { free ($$); } <u.sval>
490 yylval.u.ival = 42; return INT;
491 yylval.u.sval = "42"; return STRING;
493 ** Variable parse.error
495 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
496 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
499 ** Renamed %define variables
501 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
502 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
504 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
505 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
506 namespace -> api.namespace
507 stype -> api.value.type
509 ** Semantic predicates
511 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
513 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
514 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
515 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
516 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
517 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
520 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
522 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
523 reduce/reduce conflicts.
525 ** Tokens are numbered in their order of appearance
527 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
529 With '%token A B', A had a number less than the one of B. However,
530 precedence declarations used to generate a reversed order. This is now
531 fixed, and introducing tokens with any of %token, %left, %right,
532 %precedence, or %nonassoc yields the same result.
534 When mixing declarations of tokens with a litteral character (e.g., 'a')
535 or with an identifier (e.g., B) in a precedence declaration, Bison
536 numbered the litteral characters first. For example
540 would lead to the tokens declared in this order: 'c' 'd' A B. Again, the
541 input order is now preserved.
543 These changes were made so that one can remove useless precedence and
544 associativity declarations (i.e., map %nonassoc, %left or %right to
545 %precedence, or to %token) and get exactly the same output.
547 ** Useless precedence and associativity
549 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
551 When developing and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
552 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
553 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
554 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
555 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
556 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
557 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
559 *** Precedence warning category
561 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
562 useless precedence and associativity directives.
564 *** Useless associativity
566 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
567 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
568 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
569 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
583 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
587 *** Useless precedence
589 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
590 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
591 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
592 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
596 exp: "var" '=' "number";
600 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
604 *** Useless precedence and associativity
606 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
611 exp: "var" '=' "number";
615 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
621 With help from Joel E. Denny and Gabriel Rassoul.
623 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
624 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
625 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
626 %empty. On the following grammar:
636 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
639 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
643 ** Java skeleton improvements
645 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
646 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
647 and "%define init_throws".
648 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
650 The Java skeleton now supports push parsing.
651 Contributed by Dennis Heimbigner.
653 ** C++ skeletons improvements
655 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
657 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
658 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
659 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
661 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
663 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
665 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
667 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
668 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
669 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
670 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
671 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
672 factory invoked by the user actions).
674 *** %define api.value.type variant
676 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
677 from Théophile Ranquet.
679 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
682 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
685 %type <::std::string> item;
686 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
689 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
693 %empty { /* Generates an empty string list. */ }
694 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
698 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
699 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
702 *** %define api.token.constructor
704 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
705 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
706 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
708 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
710 parser::location_type loc = ...;
712 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
714 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
716 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
722 There are operator- and operator-= for 'location'. Negative line/column
723 increments can no longer underflow the resulting value.
725 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7.1 (2013-04-15) [stable]
729 *** Fix compiler attribute portability (yacc.c)
731 With locations enabled, __attribute__ was used unprotected.
733 *** Fix some compiler warnings (lalr1.cc)
735 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
739 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
741 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
743 ** Diagnostics are improved
745 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
747 *** Changes in the format of error messages
749 This used to be the format of many error reports:
751 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
752 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
756 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
757 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
759 *** New format for error reports: carets
761 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
763 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
766 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
772 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
773 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
775 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
776 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
778 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
779 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
781 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
782 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
785 The default behavior for now is still not to display these unless
786 explicitly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
787 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
790 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
792 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
793 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
794 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
795 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
796 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
799 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
800 "%define api.pure full".
802 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
804 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
805 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
806 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
807 then responsible to define her type.
809 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
810 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
813 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
814 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
817 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
818 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
821 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
823 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
824 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
825 before re-throwing the exception.
827 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
830 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
832 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
834 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
835 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
836 numbered and left-justified.
838 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
839 diamond shaped nodes.
841 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
842 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
844 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
846 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
847 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
851 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
852 have been fixed and extended.
854 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
855 were not properly documented.
857 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
859 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
861 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
862 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
863 reporting them to us.
867 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
868 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
871 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
873 Null characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
875 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
876 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
878 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
880 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
882 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
886 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
888 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
889 users to the appropriate place to report them.
891 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
893 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
894 generated, are removed.
896 All the generated headers are self-contained.
898 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
900 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
901 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
902 For instance the header generated from
904 %define api.prefix "calc"
905 %defines "lib/parse.h"
907 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
909 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
911 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
914 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
915 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
916 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
920 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
922 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
923 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
926 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
930 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
931 suite have been fixed.
933 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
935 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
936 invalid C++. This is fixed.
938 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
940 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
942 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
944 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
948 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
949 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
950 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
952 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
956 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
960 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
962 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
964 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
966 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
967 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
970 ** Type names in actions
972 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
973 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
975 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
977 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
978 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
980 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
984 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
985 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
989 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
990 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
993 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
995 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
998 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
999 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
1001 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
1004 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
1006 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
1007 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
1008 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
1009 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
1012 ** Generated Parser Headers
1014 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
1016 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
1017 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
1022 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
1024 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
1026 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
1027 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
1029 int bar_parse (void);
1033 #define yyparse bar_parse
1036 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
1037 single compilation unit.
1039 *** Exported symbols in C++
1041 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
1042 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
1043 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
1047 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
1050 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
1052 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
1053 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
1054 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
1055 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
1056 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
1057 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
1058 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
1060 The following examples compares both:
1062 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
1063 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
1064 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
1070 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
1071 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
1073 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
1074 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
1075 > # if defined YYDEBUG
1077 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
1079 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
1082 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
1086 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
1087 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
1090 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
1091 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
1092 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
1093 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
1098 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
1099 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
1100 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
1103 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
1104 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
1107 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
1109 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
1111 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
1113 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
1117 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
1119 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
1121 ** glr.c improvements:
1123 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
1125 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
1126 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
1128 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
1130 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
1131 when -std is passed to GCC).
1133 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
1135 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
1136 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
1140 *** C++11 compatibility:
1142 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
1147 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
1148 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
1150 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
1151 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
1153 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
1155 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
1156 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
1157 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
1159 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
1161 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1162 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1164 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1168 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
1169 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
1170 documentation were fixed.
1172 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
1174 ** Changes in the manual:
1176 *** %printer is documented
1178 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
1179 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
1181 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
1182 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
1184 *** Several improvements have been made:
1186 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
1187 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
1188 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
1189 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
1193 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
1195 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
1196 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
1198 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
1200 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
1202 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
1203 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
1205 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
1207 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
1208 halts in the middle of its course.
1210 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
1212 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
1214 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
1215 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
1216 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
1217 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
1218 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
1220 ** Named references:
1222 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
1223 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
1226 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
1227 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
1228 as named references:
1230 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
1231 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
1233 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
1235 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
1236 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
1238 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
1239 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
1240 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
1242 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
1243 will help to stabilize them.
1244 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
1246 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
1248 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
1249 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
1250 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
1251 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
1252 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
1253 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
1254 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
1255 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
1256 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
1258 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
1259 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
1260 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
1261 file with these directives:
1263 %define lr.type lalr
1264 %define lr.type ielr
1265 %define lr.type canonical-lr
1267 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
1268 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
1269 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
1272 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1275 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
1277 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
1279 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
1280 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
1281 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
1282 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
1283 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
1284 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
1285 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
1286 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
1287 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
1288 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
1291 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
1292 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
1293 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
1294 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
1295 inconsistent states.
1297 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
1298 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
1299 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
1300 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
1301 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
1302 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
1303 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
1304 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
1307 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
1308 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
1310 %define parse.lac full
1312 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
1313 details including a few caveats.
1315 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
1318 ** %define improvements:
1320 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
1322 Each of these command-line options
1325 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
1328 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
1330 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
1332 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
1334 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
1335 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
1336 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
1337 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
1339 *** Variables renamed:
1341 The following %define variables
1344 lr.keep_unreachable_states
1346 have been renamed to
1349 lr.keep-unreachable-states
1351 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
1352 for backward compatibility.
1354 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
1356 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
1357 within quotations marks. For example,
1359 %define api.push-pull "push"
1363 %define api.push-pull push
1365 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1367 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1369 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1371 ** Character literals not of length one:
1373 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1374 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1375 the following grammar to be the same token:
1381 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1382 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1384 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1386 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1387 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1388 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1389 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1391 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1393 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1394 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1395 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1396 and "last" members, instead of
1398 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1402 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1403 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1407 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1413 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1417 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1418 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1422 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1426 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1428 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1429 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1430 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1431 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1433 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1435 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1436 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1437 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1438 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1439 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1440 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1441 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1442 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1444 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1446 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1447 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1448 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1449 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1451 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1455 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1457 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1458 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1459 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1460 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1461 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1462 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1463 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1465 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1467 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1468 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1469 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1470 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1471 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1473 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1474 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1475 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1476 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1477 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1478 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1479 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1480 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1481 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1482 shifted or discarded.
1484 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1485 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1486 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1487 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1489 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1490 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1491 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1492 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1493 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1494 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1495 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1496 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1497 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1498 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1499 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1500 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1503 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1505 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1507 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1508 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1510 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1512 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1514 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1516 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1517 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1519 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1521 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1523 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1524 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1525 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1526 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1529 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1530 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1531 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1532 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1534 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1535 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1536 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1537 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1539 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1541 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1542 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1544 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1546 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1548 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1549 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1550 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1551 suppress all warnings:
1555 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1557 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1558 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1559 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1563 This bug has been fixed.
1565 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1567 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1568 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1570 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1573 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1575 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1578 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1579 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1580 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1581 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1583 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1585 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1587 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1588 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1589 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1590 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1593 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1595 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1596 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1597 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1598 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1599 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1600 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1601 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1602 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1603 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1605 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1607 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1608 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1611 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1613 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1617 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1618 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1621 %code requires {CODE}
1622 %code provides {CODE}
1625 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1626 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1627 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1628 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1629 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1631 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1632 is still considered experimental.
1634 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1636 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1637 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1638 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1639 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1640 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1643 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1644 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1645 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1646 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1647 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1648 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1649 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1651 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1653 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1654 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1655 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1656 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1657 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1658 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1659 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1660 be removed altogether.
1662 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1663 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1664 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1665 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1666 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1667 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1668 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1669 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1670 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1671 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1673 ** Internationalization.
1675 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1676 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1679 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1681 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1682 declarations have been fixed.
1684 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1686 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1687 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1689 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1693 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1695 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1696 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1697 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1698 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1699 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1702 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1704 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1706 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1708 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1709 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1710 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1711 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1714 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1716 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1719 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1721 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1724 %define NAME "VALUE"
1726 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1730 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1731 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1735 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1736 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1737 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1738 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1739 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1741 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1742 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1744 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1746 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1747 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1749 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1750 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1751 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1755 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1756 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1757 %skeleton to select it.
1759 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1761 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1762 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1763 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1767 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1768 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1769 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1770 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1772 ** XML Automaton Report
1774 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1775 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1776 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1777 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1779 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1780 %defines. For example:
1784 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1785 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1786 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1787 instead of "unused".
1789 ** Unreachable State Removal
1791 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1792 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1793 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1795 1. Removes unreachable states.
1797 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1798 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1799 directives in existing grammar files.
1801 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1802 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1804 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1806 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1808 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1809 for further discussion.
1811 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1813 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1814 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1815 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1816 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1817 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1818 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1819 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1822 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1825 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1828 %file-prefix "parser"
1832 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1834 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1835 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1836 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1837 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1840 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1841 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1842 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1843 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1845 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1846 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1847 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1848 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1850 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1851 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1853 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1855 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1856 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1859 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1861 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1862 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1864 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1866 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1867 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1868 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1870 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1871 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1873 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1875 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1878 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1879 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1880 declared semantic type tags.
1882 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1883 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1886 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1887 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1888 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1889 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1891 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1892 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1895 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1898 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1899 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1900 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1902 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1903 completely removed from Bison.
1905 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1907 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1908 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1909 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1910 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1911 and is required by POSIX.
1913 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1914 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1916 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1920 %union { char *string; }
1921 %token <string> STRING1
1922 %token <string> STRING2
1923 %type <string> string1
1924 %type <string> string2
1925 %union { char character; }
1926 %token <character> CHR
1927 %type <character> chr
1928 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1929 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1930 %destructor { } <character>
1932 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1933 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1934 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1935 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1936 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1938 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1939 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1942 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1943 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1944 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1945 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1946 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1948 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1949 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1951 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1952 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1953 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1954 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1955 declared after the first %union.
1957 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1958 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1959 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1960 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1961 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1962 after the token definitions.
1964 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1965 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1967 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1968 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1971 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1972 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1973 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1977 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1978 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1979 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1980 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1981 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1984 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1985 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1986 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1987 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1990 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1991 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1992 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1995 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1996 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1997 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1998 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
2002 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
2003 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
2004 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
2005 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
2006 * Bison-generated definitions. */
2009 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
2010 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
2012 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
2013 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
2015 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
2016 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
2017 in a future release.
2019 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
2021 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
2022 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
2024 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
2025 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
2027 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
2029 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
2030 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
2031 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
2033 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
2035 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
2037 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
2038 their contents together.
2040 ** New warning: unused values
2041 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
2042 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
2044 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
2048 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
2049 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
2050 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
2052 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
2053 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
2055 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
2058 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
2059 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
2060 values are used, e.g.:
2062 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
2063 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
2066 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
2067 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
2069 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
2071 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
2072 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
2074 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
2075 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
2076 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
2077 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
2079 ** %expect, %expect-rr
2080 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
2081 instead of warnings.
2083 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
2084 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
2085 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
2087 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
2089 ** %require "VERSION"
2090 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
2091 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
2093 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
2094 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
2095 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
2096 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
2097 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
2099 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
2100 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
2101 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
2102 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
2104 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
2105 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
2107 ** DJGPP support added.
2109 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
2111 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
2113 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
2114 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
2115 language is still English. For details, please see the new
2116 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
2117 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
2118 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
2120 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
2121 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
2122 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
2123 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
2125 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
2126 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
2127 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
2129 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
2130 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
2131 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
2132 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
2133 unexpected "number"'.
2135 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
2137 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
2139 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
2140 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
2141 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
2142 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
2143 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
2145 - Error token location.
2146 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
2147 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
2148 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
2149 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
2151 - Semicolon changes:
2152 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
2153 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
2155 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
2156 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
2157 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
2158 forget a closing quote.
2160 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
2164 - GLR grammars now support locations.
2166 - New directive: %initial-action.
2167 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
2168 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
2170 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
2171 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
2173 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
2174 This is a GNU extension.
2176 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
2177 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
2179 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
2181 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
2182 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
2186 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
2187 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
2188 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
2189 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
2190 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
2191 these violations will become errors again.
2193 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
2194 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
2196 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
2198 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
2200 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
2201 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
2203 ** syntax error processing
2205 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
2206 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
2209 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
2210 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
2213 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
2215 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
2216 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
2218 ** POSIX conformance
2220 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
2221 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
2222 compatibility with Yacc.
2224 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
2225 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
2226 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
2227 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
2230 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
2231 declared before use. C99 requires this.
2233 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
2234 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
2236 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
2237 output as "foo\\bar.y".
2239 - Yacc command and library now available
2240 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
2241 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
2242 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
2243 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
2245 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
2247 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
2248 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
2249 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
2251 ** Other compatibility issues
2253 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
2254 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
2255 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
2256 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
2257 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
2258 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
2260 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
2261 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
2263 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
2264 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
2266 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
2267 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
2268 withdrawn in a future release.
2273 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
2276 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
2277 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
2279 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
2280 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
2281 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
2284 - a single argument only can be added,
2285 - their types are weak (void *),
2286 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
2287 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
2289 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
2292 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
2293 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
2294 %parse-param {int *randomness}
2296 results in the following signatures:
2298 int yylex (int *nastiness);
2299 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2301 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
2303 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
2304 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2306 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
2307 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
2308 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
2310 ** #line in output files
2311 - --no-line works properly.
2313 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
2314 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
2315 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
2316 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
2318 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
2320 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
2322 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
2325 Fix spurious parse errors.
2328 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
2329 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
2332 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
2333 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
2337 but the converse remains an error:
2341 ** Values of mid-rule actions
2344 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
2346 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
2347 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
2349 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
2354 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
2355 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
2356 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
2357 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2359 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
2360 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
2363 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2364 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2365 now creates "bar.c".
2368 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2369 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2371 ** Unknown token numbers
2372 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2376 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2377 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2378 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2379 will be mapped onto another number.
2381 ** Verbose error messages
2382 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2383 error recovery is possible.
2386 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2388 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2389 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2390 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2391 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2392 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2393 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2394 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2395 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2396 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2399 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2402 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2403 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2404 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2405 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2407 ** Explicit initial rule
2408 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2409 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2413 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2414 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2416 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2417 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2419 ** Rules never reduced
2420 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2423 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
2424 On a grammar such as
2426 %token useless useful
2428 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2430 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2431 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2433 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2434 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2436 ** Default locations
2437 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2438 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2439 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2440 the computation of @$.
2442 ** Token end-of-file
2443 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2444 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2445 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2449 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2452 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2455 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2456 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2458 ** Incorrect token definitions
2461 bison used to output
2464 ** Token definitions as enums
2465 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2466 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2467 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2470 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2471 produces additional information:
2473 complete the core item sets with their closure
2474 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2475 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2477 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2478 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2479 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2482 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2483 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2491 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2493 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2496 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2497 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2498 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2500 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2501 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2502 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2503 kludge will be disabled.
2505 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2508 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2510 ** File name clashes are detected
2511 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2512 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2514 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2515 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2516 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2517 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2518 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2519 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2521 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2522 many portability hassles.
2524 ** DJGPP support added.
2526 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2528 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2531 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2532 under some conditions.
2537 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2539 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2541 ** Portability fixes
2543 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2545 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2549 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2550 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2551 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2552 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2553 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2555 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2556 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2557 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2559 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2562 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2564 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2565 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2568 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2569 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2570 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2572 ** Better C++ compliance
2573 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2574 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2577 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2580 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2583 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2586 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2589 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2591 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2593 ** Swedish translation
2596 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2597 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2598 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2600 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2601 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2602 previous allocations were not freed.
2604 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2605 Some newlines were missing.
2606 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2608 ** Fixed conflict report.
2609 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2613 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2615 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2617 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2619 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2621 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2622 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2624 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2626 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2630 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2632 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2634 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2635 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2638 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2641 ** Portability fixes.
2643 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2645 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2646 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2647 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2648 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2650 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2652 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2654 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2656 ** Russian translation added.
2658 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2660 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2662 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2664 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2666 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2668 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2669 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2672 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2673 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2676 Automatic location tracking.
2678 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2680 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2684 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2686 ** There is now a FAQ.
2688 * Changes in version 1.27:
2690 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2691 some systems has been fixed.
2693 * Changes in version 1.26:
2695 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2697 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2699 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2701 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2703 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2705 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2707 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2708 not provide alloca().
2710 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2712 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2713 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2715 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2716 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2717 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2719 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2720 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2721 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2724 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2725 directives in the parser file.
2727 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2728 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2730 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2731 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2732 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2733 a switch statement body.
2735 * Changes in version 1.23:
2737 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2738 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2739 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2740 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2742 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2744 * Changes in version 1.22:
2746 --help option added.
2748 * Changes in version 1.20:
2750 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2754 Copyright (C) 1995-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2756 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2758 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2759 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2760 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2761 (at your option) any later version.
2763 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2764 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2765 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2766 GNU General Public License for more details.
2768 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2769 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2771 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2772 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2773 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2774 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2775 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2776 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2777 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2778 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2779 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2780 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2781 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2782 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2783 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2784 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2785 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2786 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2787 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2788 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2789 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts parsers yystackp yyval yynerrs
2790 LocalWords: Théophile Ranquet Santet fno fnone stype associativity Tolmer
2791 LocalWords: Wprecedence Rassoul Wempty Paolo Bonzini parser's Michiel loc
2792 LocalWords: redeclaration sval fcaret reentrant XSLT xsl Wmaybe yyvsp Tedi
2793 LocalWords: pragmas noreturn untyped Rozenman unexpanded Wojciech Polak
2794 LocalWords: Alexandre MERCHANTABILITY yytype