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java: stype is obsoleted by api.value.type
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1 GNU Bison NEWS
2
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5 ** Incompatible changes
6
7 *** Obsolete features
8
9 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
10
11 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
12 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
13
14 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
15 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
16
17 ** Warnings
18
19 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
20
21 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
22 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
23 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
24
25 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
26 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
27 errors (and only those):
28
29 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
30
31 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
32 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
33
34 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
35
36 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
37
38 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
39 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
40
41 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
42 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
43 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
44
45 *** The display of warnings is now richer
46
47 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
48
49 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
50
51 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
52 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
53 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
54
55 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
56 with failure):
57
58 bison: warnings being treated as errors
59 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
60
61 it now reports:
62
63 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
64
65 *** Deprecated constructs
66
67 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
68 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
69 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
70
71 *** Useless semantic types
72
73 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
74 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
75 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
76 types that trigger the warning:
77
78 %token <type1> term
79 %type <type2> nterm
80 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
81 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
82 %%
83 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
84
85 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
86 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
87
88 *** Undefined but unused symbols
89
90 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
91 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
92
93 %printer {} symbol1
94 %destructor {} symbol2
95 %type <type> symbol3
96 %%
97 exp: "a";
98
99 *** Useless destructors or printers
100
101 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
102 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
103 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
104 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
105
106 %token <type1> token1
107 <type2> token2
108 <type3> token3
109 <type4> token4
110 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
111 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
112
113 *** Conflicts
114
115 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
116 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
117
118 %glr-parser
119 %%
120 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
121
122 compare the previous version of bison:
123
124 $ bison foo.y
125 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
126 $ bison -Werror foo.y
127 bison: warnings being treated as errors
128 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
129
130 with the new behavior:
131
132 $ bison foo.y
133 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
134 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
135 $ bison -Werror foo.y
136 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
137 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
138
139 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
140
141 %expect 0
142 %glr-parser
143 %%
144 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
145
146 Former behavior:
147
148 $ bison bar.y
149 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
150 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
151 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
152
153 New one:
154
155 $ bison bar.y
156 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
157 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
158
159 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
160
161 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
162 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
163 or more arguments. Instead of
164
165 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
166 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
167 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
168 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
169
170 one may now declare
171
172 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
173
174 ** Java skeleton improvements
175
176 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
177 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
178 and "%define init_throws".
179
180 ** C++ skeletons improvements
181
182 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
183
184 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
185 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
186 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
187
188 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
189
190 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
191
192 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
193
194 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
195 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
196 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
197 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
198 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
199 factory invoked by the user actions).
200
201 ** Renamed %define variables
202
203 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
204 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
205
206 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
207 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
208 namespace -> api.namespace
209 stype -> api.value.type
210
211 ** Variable api.token.prefix
212
213 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
214 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
215 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
216
217 %token FILE for ERROR
218 %define api.token.prefix "TOK_"
219 %%
220 start: FILE for ERROR;
221
222 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
223 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
224 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
225 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
226
227
228
229 ** Variable parse.error
230
231 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
232 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
233 verbose".
234
235 ** Semantic predicates
236
237 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
238 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
239 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
240 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
241 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
242 expressions.
243
244 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
245
246 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
247 reduce/reduce conflicts.
248
249 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
250
251 ** Bug fixes
252
253 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
254
255 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
256
257 ** Diagnostics are improved
258
259 *** Changes in the format of error messages
260
261 This used to be the format of many error reports:
262
263 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
264 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
265
266 It is now:
267
268 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
269 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
270
271 *** New format for error reports: carets
272
273 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
274
275 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
276 %type <sval> exp
277 ^^^^^^
278 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
279 %type <ival> exp
280 ^^^^^^
281
282 or
283
284 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
285 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
286 ^^^^
287 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
288 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
289 ^^^
290 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
291 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
292 ^^^
293 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
294 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
295 ^^^
296
297 The default behaviour for now is still not to display these unless
298 explictly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
299 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
300 -fno-caret).
301
302 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
303
304 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
305 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
306 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
307 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
308 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
309 parsers).
310
311 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
312 "%define api.pure full".
313
314 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
315
316 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
317 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
318 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
319 then responsible to define her type.
320
321 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
322 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
323 them.
324
325 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
326 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
327 compatibility).
328
329 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
330 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
331 api.position.type.
332
333 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
334
335 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
336 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
337 before re-throwing the exception.
338
339 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
340 appreciated.
341
342 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
343
344 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
345 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
346 numbered and left-justified.
347
348 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
349 diamond shaped nodes.
350
351 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
352 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
353
354 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
355
356 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
357 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
358
359 ** Documentation
360
361 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
362 have been fixed and extended.
363
364 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
365 were not properly documented.
366
367 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
368
369 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
370
371 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
372 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
373 reporting them to us.
374
375 ** Bug fixes
376
377 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
378 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
379 3.2.
380
381 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
382
383 Nul characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
384
385 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
386 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
387
388 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
389
390 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
391
392 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
393
394 ** Bug fixes
395
396 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
397
398 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
399 users to the appropriate place to report them.
400
401 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
402
403 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
404 generated, are removed.
405
406 All the generated headers are self-contained.
407
408 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
409
410 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
411 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
412 For instance the header generated from
413
414 %define api.prefix "calc"
415 %defines "lib/parse.h"
416
417 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
418
419 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
420
421 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
422 warnings such as:
423
424 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
425 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
426 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
427 *++yyvsp = yylval;
428 ^
429
430 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
431
432 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
433 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
434 addressed.
435
436 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
437
438 ** Bug fixes
439
440 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
441 suite have been fixed.
442
443 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
444
445 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
446 invalid C++. This is fixed.
447
448 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
449
450 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
451
452 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
453
454 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
455
456 ** Future Changes
457
458 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
459 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
460 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
461
462 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
463
464 write:
465
466 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
467
468 ** Bug fixes
469
470 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
471
472 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
473
474 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
475
476 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
477 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
478 now does.
479
480 ** Type names in actions
481
482 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
483 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
484
485 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
486
487 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
488 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
489
490 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
491
492 ** Future changes
493
494 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
495 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
496
497 *** K&R C parsers
498
499 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
500 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
501 compilers.
502
503 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
504
505 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
506 YYLTYPE.
507
508 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
509 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
510
511 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
512 %error-verbose.
513
514 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
515
516 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
517 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
518 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
519 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
520 it.
521
522 ** Generated Parser Headers
523
524 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
525
526 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
527 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
528
529 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
530 # define YY_FOO_H
531 ...
532 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
533
534 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
535
536 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
537 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
538
539 int bar_parse (void);
540
541 rather than
542
543 #define yyparse bar_parse
544 int yyparse (void);
545
546 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
547 single compilation unit.
548
549 *** Exported symbols in C++
550
551 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
552 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
553 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
554
555 *** YYLSP_NEEDED
556
557 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
558 longer defined.
559
560 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
561
562 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
563 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
564 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
565 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
566 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
567 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
568 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
569
570 The following examples compares both:
571
572 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
573 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
574 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
575 %% %%
576 exp: 'a'; exp: 'a';
577
578 bison generates:
579
580 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
581 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
582
583 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
584 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
585 > # if defined YYDEBUG
586 > # if YYDEBUG
587 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
588 > # else
589 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
590 > # endif
591 > # else
592 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
593 > # endif
594 # endif | # endif
595
596 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
597 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
598 # endif # endif
599
600 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
601 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
602 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
603 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
604 FOO = 258 FOO = 258
605 }; };
606 # endif # endif
607
608 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
609 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
610 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
611 { {
612 int ival; int ival;
613 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
614 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
615 #endif #endif
616
617 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
618
619 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
620
621 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
622
623 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
624
625 ** Future changes:
626
627 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
628
629 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
630
631 ** glr.c improvements:
632
633 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
634
635 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
636 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
637
638 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
639
640 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
641 when -std is passed to GCC).
642
643 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
644
645 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
646 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
647
648 ** Changes for C++:
649
650 *** C++11 compatibility:
651
652 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
653 or higher.
654
655 *** Header guards
656
657 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
658 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
659
660 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
661 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
662 ...
663 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
664
665 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
666 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
667 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
668
669 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
670
671 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
672 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
673 ...
674 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
675
676 *** C++ locations:
677
678 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
679 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
680 documentation were fixed.
681
682 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
683
684 ** Changes in the manual:
685
686 *** %printer is documented
687
688 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
689 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
690
691 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
692 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
693
694 *** Several improvements have been made:
695
696 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
697 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
698 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
699 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
700
701 ** Building bison:
702
703 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
704
705 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
706 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
707
708 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
709
710 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
711
712 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
713 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
714
715 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
716
717 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
718 halts in the middle of its course.
719
720 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
721
722 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
723
724 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
725 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
726 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
727 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
728 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
729
730 ** Named references:
731
732 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
733 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
734 actions code.
735
736 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
737 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
738 as named references:
739
740 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
741 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
742
743 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
744
745 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
746 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
747
748 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
749 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
750 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
751
752 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
753 will help to stabilize them.
754 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
755
756 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
757
758 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
759 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
760 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
761 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
762 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
763 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
764 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
765 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
766 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
767
768 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
769 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
770 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
771 file with these directives:
772
773 %define lr.type lalr
774 %define lr.type ielr
775 %define lr.type canonical-lr
776
777 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
778 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
779 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
780 manual.
781
782 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
783 stabilize them.
784
785 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
786
787 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
788 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
789 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
790 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
791 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
792 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
793 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
794 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
795 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
796 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
797 tokens.
798
799 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
800 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
801 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
802 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
803 inconsistent states.
804
805 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
806 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
807 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
808 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
809 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
810 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
811 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
812 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
813 power.
814
815 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
816 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
817
818 %define parse.lac full
819
820 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
821 details including a few caveats.
822
823 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
824 stabilize it.
825
826 ** %define improvements:
827
828 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
829
830 Each of these command-line options
831
832 -D NAME[=VALUE]
833 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
834
835 -F NAME[=VALUE]
836 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
837
838 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
839
840 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
841
842 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
843 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
844 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
845 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
846
847 *** Variables renamed:
848
849 The following %define variables
850
851 api.push_pull
852 lr.keep_unreachable_states
853
854 have been renamed to
855
856 api.push-pull
857 lr.keep-unreachable-states
858
859 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
860 for backward compatibility.
861
862 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
863
864 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
865 within quotations marks. For example,
866
867 %define api.push-pull "push"
868
869 can be rewritten as
870
871 %define api.push-pull push
872
873 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
874
875 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
876
877 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
878
879 ** Character literals not of length one:
880
881 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
882 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
883 the following grammar to be the same token:
884
885 exp: exp '++'
886 | exp '+' exp
887 ;
888
889 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
890 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
891
892 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
893
894 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
895 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
896 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
897 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
898
899 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
900
901 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
902 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
903 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
904 and "last" members, instead of
905
906 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
907 do \
908 if (N) \
909 { \
910 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
911 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
912 } \
913 else \
914 { \
915 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
916 } \
917 while (false)
918
919 use:
920
921 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
922 do \
923 if (N) \
924 { \
925 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
926 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
927 } \
928 else \
929 { \
930 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
931 } \
932 while (false)
933
934 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
935
936 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
937 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
938 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
939 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
940
941 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
942
943 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
944 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
945 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
946 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
947 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
948 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
949 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
950 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
951
952 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
953
954 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
955 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
956 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
957 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
958
959 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
960
961 instead of
962
963 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
964
965 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
966 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
967 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
968 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
969 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
970 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
971 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
972
973 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
974
975 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
976 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
977 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
978 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
979 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
980
981 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
982 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
983 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
984 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
985 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
986 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
987 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
988 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
989 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
990 shifted or discarded.
991
992 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
993 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
994 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
995 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
996
997 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
998 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
999 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1000 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1001 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1002 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1003 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1004 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1005 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1006 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1007 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1008 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1009 by default.
1010
1011 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1012
1013 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1014
1015 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1016 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1017
1018 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1019
1020 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1021
1022 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1023
1024 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1025 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1026
1027 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1028
1029 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1030
1031 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1032 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1033 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1034 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1035 example:
1036
1037 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1038 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1039 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1040 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1041
1042 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1043 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1044 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1045 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1046
1047 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1048
1049 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1050 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1051
1052 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1053
1054 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1055
1056 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1057 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1058 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1059 suppress all warnings:
1060
1061 bison -Wnone gram.y
1062
1063 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1064
1065 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1066 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1067 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1068
1069 %left END 0
1070
1071 This bug has been fixed.
1072
1073 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1074
1075 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1076 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1077
1078 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1079 been fixed.
1080
1081 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1082
1083 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1084 been fixed.
1085
1086 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1087 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1088 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1089 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1090
1091 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1092
1093 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1094
1095 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1096 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1097 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1098 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1099 affected platforms.
1100
1101 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1102
1103 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1104 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1105 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1106 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1107 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1108 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1109 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1110 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1111 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1112
1113 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1114
1115 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1116 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1117 avoided.
1118
1119 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1120
1121 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1122
1123 %{CODE%}
1124
1125 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1126 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1127
1128 %code {CODE}
1129 %code requires {CODE}
1130 %code provides {CODE}
1131 %code top {CODE}
1132
1133 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1134 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1135 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1136 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1137 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1138
1139 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1140 is still considered experimental.
1141
1142 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1143
1144 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1145 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1146 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1147 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1148 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1149 specified by POSIX.
1150
1151 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1152 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1153 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1154 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1155 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1156 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1157 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1158
1159 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1160
1161 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1162 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1163 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1164 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1165 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1166 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1167 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1168 be removed altogether.
1169
1170 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1171 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1172 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1173 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1174 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1175 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1176 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1177 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1178 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1179 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1180
1181 ** Internationalization.
1182
1183 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1184 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1185 host system.
1186
1187 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1188
1189 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1190 declarations have been fixed.
1191
1192 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1193
1194 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1195 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1196
1197 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1198
1199 instead of
1200
1201 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1202
1203 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1204 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1205 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1206 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1207 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1208 feature.
1209
1210 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1211
1212 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1213
1214 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1215
1216 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1217 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1218 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1219 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1220 in future releases.
1221
1222 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1223
1224 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1225 fixed.
1226
1227 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1228
1229 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1230 are now deprecated:
1231
1232 %define NAME "VALUE"
1233
1234 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1235
1236 %define api.pure
1237
1238 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1239 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1240
1241 ** Push Parsing
1242
1243 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1244 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1245 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1246 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1247 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1248
1249 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1250 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1251
1252 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1253
1254 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1255 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1256
1257 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1258 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1259 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1260
1261 ** Java
1262
1263 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1264 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1265 %skeleton to select it.
1266
1267 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1268
1269 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1270 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1271 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1272
1273 ** %language
1274
1275 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1276 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1277 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1278 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1279
1280 ** XML Automaton Report
1281
1282 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1283 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1284 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1285 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1286
1287 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1288 %defines. For example:
1289
1290 %defines "parser.h"
1291
1292 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1293 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1294 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1295 instead of "unused".
1296
1297 ** Unreachable State Removal
1298
1299 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1300 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1301 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1302
1303 1. Removes unreachable states.
1304
1305 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1306 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1307 directives in existing grammar files.
1308
1309 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1310 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1311
1312 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1313
1314 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1315
1316 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1317 for further discussion.
1318
1319 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1320
1321 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1322 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1323 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1324 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1325 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1326 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1327 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1328 code.
1329
1330 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1331 name.
1332
1333 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1334 deprecated:
1335
1336 %file-prefix "parser"
1337 %name-prefix "c_"
1338 %output "parser.c"
1339
1340 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1341
1342 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1343 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1344 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1345 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1346 it:
1347
1348 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1349 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1350 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1351 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1352
1353 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1354 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1355 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1356 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1357
1358 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1359 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1360
1361 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1362
1363 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1364 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1365 about unused $2 in:
1366
1367 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1368
1369 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1370 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1371
1372 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1373
1374 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1375 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1376 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1377
1378 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1379 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1380
1381 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1382
1383 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1384 %printer's:
1385
1386 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1387 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1388 declared semantic type tags.
1389
1390 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1391 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1392 type tags.
1393
1394 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1395 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1396 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1397 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1398
1399 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1400 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1401 features.
1402
1403 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1404 details.
1405
1406 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1407 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1408 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1409
1410 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1411 completely removed from Bison.
1412
1413 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1414
1415 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1416 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1417 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1418 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1419 and is required by POSIX.
1420
1421 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1422 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1423
1424 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1425
1426 For example:
1427
1428 %union { char *string; }
1429 %token <string> STRING1
1430 %token <string> STRING2
1431 %type <string> string1
1432 %type <string> string2
1433 %union { char character; }
1434 %token <character> CHR
1435 %type <character> chr
1436 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1437 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1438 %destructor { } <character>
1439
1440 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1441 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1442 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1443 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1444 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1445
1446 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1447 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1448 future versions.]
1449
1450 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1451 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1452 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1453 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1454 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1455
1456 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1457 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1458
1459 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1460 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1461 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1462 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1463 declared after the first %union.
1464
1465 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1466 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1467 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1468 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1469 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1470 after the token definitions.
1471
1472 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1473 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1474
1475 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1476 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1477 %after-header.
1478
1479 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1480 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1481 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1482 convenient for you:
1483
1484 %before-header {
1485 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1486 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1487 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1488 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1489 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1490 }
1491 %start-header {
1492 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1493 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1494 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1495 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1496 }
1497 %union {
1498 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1499 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1500 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1501 }
1502 %end-header {
1503 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1504 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1505 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1506 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1507 * definitions. */
1508 }
1509 %after-header {
1510 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1511 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1512 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1513 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1514 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1515 }
1516
1517 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1518 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1519
1520 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1521 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1522
1523 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1524 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1525 in a future release.
1526
1527 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1528
1529 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1530 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1531
1532 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1533 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1534
1535 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1536
1537 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1538 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1539 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1540
1541 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1542
1543 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1544
1545 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1546 their contents together.
1547
1548 ** New warning: unused values
1549 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1550 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1551
1552 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1553 | exp "+" exp
1554 ;
1555
1556 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1557 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1558 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1559
1560 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1561 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1562 | exp "+" exp
1563 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1564 ;
1565
1566 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1567 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1568 values are used, e.g.:
1569
1570 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1571 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1572 ;
1573
1574 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1575 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1576
1577 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1578
1579 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1580 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1581
1582 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1583 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1584 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1585 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1586
1587 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1588 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1589 instead of warnings.
1590
1591 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1592 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1593 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1594
1595 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1596
1597 ** %require "VERSION"
1598 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1599 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1600
1601 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1602 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1603 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1604 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1605 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1606
1607 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1608 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1609 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1610 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1611
1612 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1613 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1614
1615 ** DJGPP support added.
1616 \f
1617 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1618
1619 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1620
1621 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1622 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1623 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1624 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1625 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1626 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1627
1628 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1629 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1630 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1631 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1632
1633 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1634 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1635 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1636
1637 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1638 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1639 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1640 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1641 unexpected "number"'.
1642 \f
1643 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1644
1645 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1646
1647 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1648 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1649 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1650 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1651 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1652
1653 - Error token location.
1654 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1655 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1656 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1657 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1658
1659 - Semicolon changes:
1660 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1661 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1662
1663 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1664 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1665 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1666 forget a closing quote.
1667
1668 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1669
1670 ** New features
1671
1672 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1673
1674 - New directive: %initial-action.
1675 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1676 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1677
1678 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1679 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1680
1681 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1682 This is a GNU extension.
1683
1684 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1685 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1686
1687 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1688
1689 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1690 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1691
1692 ** Bug fixes
1693
1694 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1695 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1696 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1697 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1698 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1699 these violations will become errors again.
1700
1701 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1702 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1703
1704 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1705 \f
1706 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1707
1708 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1709 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1710
1711 ** syntax error processing
1712
1713 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1714 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1715
1716 - %destructor
1717 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1718 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1719
1720 - %error-verbose
1721 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1722
1723 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1724 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1725
1726 ** POSIX conformance
1727
1728 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1729 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1730 compatibility with Yacc.
1731
1732 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1733 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1734 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1735 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1736 be consistent.
1737
1738 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1739 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1740
1741 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1742 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1743
1744 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1745 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1746
1747 - Yacc command and library now available
1748 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1749 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1750 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1751 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1752
1753 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1754
1755 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1756 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1757 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1758
1759 ** Other compatibility issues
1760
1761 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1762 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1763 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1764 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1765 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1766 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1767
1768 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1769 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1770
1771 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1772 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1773
1774 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1775 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1776 withdrawn in a future release.
1777
1778 ** GLR parser notes
1779
1780 - GLR and inline
1781 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1782 C keyword "inline".
1783
1784 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1785 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1786
1787 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1788 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1789 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1790 shortcomings:
1791
1792 - a single argument only can be added,
1793 - their types are weak (void *),
1794 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1795 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1796
1797 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1798 For instance:
1799
1800 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1801 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1802 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1803
1804 results in the following signatures:
1805
1806 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1807 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1808
1809 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1810
1811 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1812 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1813
1814 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1815 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1816 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1817
1818 ** #line in output files
1819 - --no-line works properly.
1820
1821 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1822 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1823 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1824 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1825 \f
1826 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1827
1828 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1829
1830 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1831
1832 ** GLR parsers
1833 Fix spurious parse errors.
1834
1835 ** Pure parsers
1836 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1837 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1838
1839 ** Type Clashes
1840 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1841 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1842
1843 untyped: ... typed;
1844
1845 but the converse remains an error:
1846
1847 typed: ... untyped;
1848
1849 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1850 The following code:
1851
1852 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1853
1854 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1855 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1856 \f
1857 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1858
1859 ** GLR parsing
1860 The declaration
1861 %glr-parser
1862 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1863 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1864 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1865 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1866
1867 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1868 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1869
1870 ** Output Directory
1871 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1872 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1873 now creates "bar.c".
1874
1875 ** Undefined token
1876 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1877 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1878
1879 ** Unknown token numbers
1880 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1881 no longer the case.
1882
1883 ** Error token
1884 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1885 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1886 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1887 will be mapped onto another number.
1888
1889 ** Verbose error messages
1890 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1891 error recovery is possible.
1892
1893 ** End token
1894 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1895
1896 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1897 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1898 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1899 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1900 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1901 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1902 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1903 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1904 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1905
1906 ** Traces
1907 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1908
1909 ** Larger grammars
1910 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1911 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1912 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1913 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1914
1915 ** Explicit initial rule
1916 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1917 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1918 graphs as rule 0.
1919
1920 ** Useless rules
1921 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1922 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1923
1924 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1925 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1926
1927 ** Rules never reduced
1928 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1929 reported.
1930
1931 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1932 On a grammar such as
1933
1934 %token useless useful
1935 %%
1936 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1937
1938 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1939 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1940
1941 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1942 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1943
1944 ** Default locations
1945 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1946 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1947 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1948 the computation of @$.
1949
1950 ** Token end-of-file
1951 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1952 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1953 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1954 For instance
1955 %token MYEOF 0
1956 or
1957 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1958
1959 ** Semantic parser
1960 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1961
1962 ** New translations
1963 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1964 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1965
1966 ** Incorrect token definitions
1967 When given
1968 %token 'a' "A"
1969 bison used to output
1970 #define 'a' 65
1971
1972 ** Token definitions as enums
1973 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1974 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1975 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1976
1977 ** Reports
1978 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1979 produces additional information:
1980 - itemset
1981 complete the core item sets with their closure
1982 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1983 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1984 - solved
1985 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1986 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1987 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1988
1989 ** Type clashes
1990 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1991 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1992
1993 %type <foo> bar
1994 %%
1995 bar: '0' {} '0';
1996
1997 This is fixed.
1998
1999 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2000 \f
2001 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2002
2003 ** C Skeleton
2004 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2005 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2006 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2007
2008 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2009 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2010 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2011 kludge will be disabled.
2012
2013 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2014 extended.
2015 \f
2016 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2017
2018 ** File name clashes are detected
2019 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2020 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2021
2022 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2023 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2024 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2025 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2026 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2027 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2028
2029 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2030 many portability hassles.
2031
2032 ** DJGPP support added.
2033
2034 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2035 \f
2036 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2037
2038 ** Fix C++ issues
2039 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2040 under some conditions.
2041
2042 ** Catch invalid @n
2043 As is done with $n.
2044 \f
2045 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2046
2047 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2048
2049 ** Portability fixes
2050
2051 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2052 \f
2053 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2054
2055 ** Many Bug Fixes
2056
2057 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2058 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2059 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2060 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2061 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2062
2063 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2064 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2065 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2066
2067 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2068 problems as on AIX.
2069
2070 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2071
2072 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2073 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2074
2075 ** User Actions
2076 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2077 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2078 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2079
2080 ** Better C++ compliance
2081 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2082 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2083
2084 ** Reduced Grammars
2085 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2086
2087 ** 64 bit hosts
2088 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2089
2090 ** Error messages
2091 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2092
2093 ** %expect
2094 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2095 any warning.
2096
2097 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2098
2099 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2100
2101 ** Swedish translation
2102
2103 ** Parse errors
2104 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2105 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2106 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2107
2108 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2109 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2110 previous allocations were not freed.
2111
2112 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2113 Some newlines were missing.
2114 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2115
2116 ** Fixed conflict report.
2117 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2118
2119 ** %expect
2120 Was not used.
2121 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2122
2123 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2124
2125 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2126
2127 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2128
2129 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2130 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2131
2132 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2133
2134 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2135 New.
2136
2137 ** --output
2138 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2139 \f
2140 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2141
2142 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2143 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2144 argument.
2145
2146 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2147 experiment.
2148
2149 ** Portability fixes.
2150 \f
2151 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2152
2153 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2154 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2155 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2156 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2157
2158 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2159
2160 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2161
2162 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2163
2164 ** Russian translation added.
2165
2166 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2167
2168 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2169
2170 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2171
2172 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2173
2174 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2175
2176 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2177 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2178
2179 ** New directives.
2180 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2181 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2182
2183 ** @$
2184 Automatic location tracking.
2185 \f
2186 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2187
2188 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2189
2190 ** Added NLS.
2191
2192 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2193
2194 ** There is now a FAQ.
2195 \f
2196 * Changes in version 1.27:
2197
2198 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2199 some systems has been fixed.
2200 \f
2201 * Changes in version 1.26:
2202
2203 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2204
2205 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2206
2207 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2208
2209 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2210
2211 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2212
2213 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2214
2215 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2216 not provide alloca().
2217 \f
2218 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2219
2220 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2221 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2222
2223 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2224 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2225 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2226
2227 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2228 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2229 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2230 purposes.
2231
2232 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2233 directives in the parser file.
2234
2235 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2236 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2237
2238 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2239 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2240 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2241 a switch statement body.
2242 \f
2243 * Changes in version 1.23:
2244
2245 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2246 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2247 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2248 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2249
2250 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2251 \f
2252 * Changes in version 1.22:
2253
2254 --help option added.
2255 \f
2256 * Changes in version 1.20:
2257
2258 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2259
2260 -----
2261
2262 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2263
2264 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2265
2266 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2267 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2268 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2269 (at your option) any later version.
2270
2271 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2272 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2273 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2274 GNU General Public License for more details.
2275
2276 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2277 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2278
2279 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2280 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2281 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2282 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2283 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2284 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2285 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2286 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2287 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2288 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2289 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2290 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2291 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2292 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2293 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2294 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2295 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2296 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2297 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts
2298
2299 Local Variables:
2300 mode: outline
2301 fill-column: 76
2302 End: