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1 GNU Bison NEWS
2
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
6
7 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
8 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
9 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
10
11 ** Backward incompatible changes
12
13 *** Obsolete features
14
15 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
16
17 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
18 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
19
20 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
21 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
22
23 Missing semicolons at the end of actions are no longer added (as announced
24 in the release 2.5).
25
26 ** Bug fixes
27
28 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
29
30 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
31 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
32 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
33 preprocessor expansion:
34
35 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
36
37 This is fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
38 identifiers for user-provided variables.
39
40 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
41
42 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
43 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
44
45 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
46
47 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
48 Santet.
49
50 *** Carets
51
52 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
53 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
54 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
55
56 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
57 the caret information only. For instance on:
58
59 %%
60 exp: 'a' | 'a';
61
62 Bison 2.7 reports:
63
64 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
65 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
66
67 Now bison reports:
68
69 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
70 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
71 exp: 'a' | 'a';
72 ^^^
73
74 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
75
76 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
77 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
78
79 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
80
81 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
82 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
83 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
84
85 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
86 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
87 errors (and only those):
88
89 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
90
91 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
92 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
93
94 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
95
96 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
97
98 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
99 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
100
101 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
102 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
103 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
104
105 *** The display of warnings is now richer
106
107 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
108
109 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
110
111 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
112 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
113 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
114
115 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
116 with failure):
117
118 bison: warnings being treated as errors
119 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
120
121 it now reports:
122
123 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
124
125 *** Deprecated constructs
126
127 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
128 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
129 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
130
131 *** Useless semantic types
132
133 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
134 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
135 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
136 types that trigger the warning:
137
138 %token <type1> term
139 %type <type2> nterm
140 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
141 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
142 %%
143 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
144
145 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
146 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
147
148 *** Undefined but unused symbols
149
150 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
151 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
152
153 %printer {} symbol1
154 %destructor {} symbol2
155 %type <type> symbol3
156 %%
157 exp: "a";
158
159 *** Useless destructors or printers
160
161 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
162 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
163 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
164 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
165
166 %token <type1> token1
167 <type2> token2
168 <type3> token3
169 <type4> token4
170 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
171 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
172
173 *** Conflicts
174
175 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
176 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
177
178 %glr-parser
179 %%
180 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
181
182 compare the previous version of bison:
183
184 $ bison foo.y
185 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
186 $ bison -Werror foo.y
187 bison: warnings being treated as errors
188 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
189
190 with the new behavior:
191
192 $ bison foo.y
193 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
194 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
195 $ bison -Werror foo.y
196 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
197 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
198
199 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
200
201 %expect 0
202 %glr-parser
203 %%
204 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
205
206 Former behavior:
207
208 $ bison bar.y
209 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
210 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
211 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
212
213 New one:
214
215 $ bison bar.y
216 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
217 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
218
219 ** Incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc
220
221 The 'yacc' category is no longer part of '-Wall', enable it explicitly
222 with '-Wyacc'.
223
224 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
225
226 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
227 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
228 or more arguments. Instead of
229
230 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
231 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
232 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
233 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
234
235 one may now declare
236
237 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
238
239 ** Variable api.token.prefix
240
241 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
242 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
243 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
244
245 %token FILE for ERROR
246 %define api.token.prefix "TOK_"
247 %%
248 start: FILE for ERROR;
249
250 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
251 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
252 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
253 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
254
255 ** Variable parse.error
256
257 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
258 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
259 verbose".
260
261 ** Renamed %define variables
262
263 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
264 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
265
266 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
267 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
268 namespace -> api.namespace
269 stype -> api.value.type
270
271 ** Semantic predicates
272
273 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
274
275 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
276 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
277 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
278 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
279 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
280 expressions.
281
282 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
283
284 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
285 reduce/reduce conflicts.
286
287 ** Tokens are numbered in their order of appearance
288
289 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
290
291 With '%token A B', A had a number less than the one of B. However,
292 precedence declarations used to generate a reversed order. This is now
293 fixed, and introducing tokens with any of %token, %left, %right,
294 %precedence, or %nonassoc yields the same result.
295
296 When mixing declarations of tokens with a litteral character (e.g., 'a')
297 or with an identifier (e.g., B) in a precedence declaration, Bison
298 numbered the litteral characters first. For example
299
300 %right A B 'c' 'd'
301
302 would lead to the tokens declared in this order: 'c' 'd' A B. Again, the
303 input order is now preserved.
304
305 These changes were made so that one can remove useless precedence and
306 associativity declarations (i.e., map %nonassoc, %left or %right to
307 %precedence, or to %token) and get exactly the same output.
308
309 ** Useless precedence and associativity
310
311 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
312
313 When developing and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
314 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
315 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
316 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
317 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
318 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
319 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
320
321 *** Precedence warning category
322
323 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
324 useless precedence and associativity directives.
325
326 *** Useless associativity
327
328 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
329 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
330 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
331 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
332 For example:
333
334 %left '+'
335 %left '*'
336 %%
337 exp:
338 "number"
339 | exp '+' "number"
340 | exp '*' exp
341 ;
342
343 will produce a
344
345 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
346 %left '+'
347 ^^^
348
349 *** Useless precedence
350
351 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
352 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
353 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
354 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
355
356 %precedence '='
357 %%
358 exp: "var" '=' "number";
359
360 will produce a
361
362 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
363 %precedence '='
364 ^^^
365
366 *** Useless precedence and associativity
367
368 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
369 as follows:
370
371 %nonassoc '='
372 %%
373 exp: "var" '=' "number";
374
375 The warning is:
376
377 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
378 %nonassoc '='
379 ^^^
380
381 ** Empty rules
382
383 With help from Joel E. Denny and Gabriel Rassoul.
384
385 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
386 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
387 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
388 %empty. On the following grammar:
389
390 %%
391 s: a b c;
392 a: ;
393 b: %empty;
394 c: 'a' %empty;
395
396 bison reports:
397
398 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
399 a: {}
400 ^^
401 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
402 c: 'a' %empty {};
403 ^^^^^^
404
405 ** Java skeleton improvements
406
407 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
408
409 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
410 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
411 and "%define init_throws".
412
413 ** C++ skeletons improvements
414
415 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
416
417 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
418 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
419 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
420
421 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
422
423 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
424
425 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
426
427 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
428 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
429 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
430 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
431 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
432 factory invoked by the user actions).
433
434 *** %define api.value.type variant
435
436 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
437 from Théophile Ranquet.
438
439 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
440 instance:
441
442 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
443 %token <int> NUMBER;
444 %token SEMICOLON ";"
445 %type <::std::string> item;
446 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
447 %%
448 result:
449 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
450 ;
451
452 list:
453 %empty { /* Generates an empty string list. */ }
454 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
455 ;
456
457 item:
458 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
459 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
460 ;
461
462 *** %define api.token.constructor
463
464 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
465 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
466 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
467
468 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
469 {
470 parser::location_type loc = ...;
471 ...
472 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
473 ...
474 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
475 ...
476 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
477 ...
478 }
479
480 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
481
482 ** Bug fixes
483
484 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
485
486 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
487
488 ** Diagnostics are improved
489
490 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
491
492 *** Changes in the format of error messages
493
494 This used to be the format of many error reports:
495
496 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
497 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
498
499 It is now:
500
501 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
502 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
503
504 *** New format for error reports: carets
505
506 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
507
508 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
509 %type <sval> exp
510 ^^^^^^
511 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
512 %type <ival> exp
513 ^^^^^^
514
515 or
516
517 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
518 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
519 ^^^^
520 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
521 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
522 ^^^
523 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
524 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
525 ^^^
526 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
527 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
528 ^^^
529
530 The default behavior for now is still not to display these unless
531 explicitly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
532 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
533 -fno-caret).
534
535 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
536
537 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
538 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
539 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
540 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
541 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
542 parsers).
543
544 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
545 "%define api.pure full".
546
547 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
548
549 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
550 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
551 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
552 then responsible to define her type.
553
554 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
555 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
556 them.
557
558 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
559 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
560 compatibility).
561
562 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
563 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
564 api.position.type.
565
566 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
567
568 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
569 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
570 before re-throwing the exception.
571
572 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
573 appreciated.
574
575 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
576
577 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
578
579 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
580 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
581 numbered and left-justified.
582
583 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
584 diamond shaped nodes.
585
586 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
587 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
588
589 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
590
591 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
592 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
593
594 ** Documentation
595
596 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
597 have been fixed and extended.
598
599 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
600 were not properly documented.
601
602 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
603
604 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
605
606 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
607 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
608 reporting them to us.
609
610 ** Bug fixes
611
612 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
613 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
614 3.2.
615
616 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
617
618 Null characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
619
620 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
621 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
622
623 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
624
625 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
626
627 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
628
629 ** Bug fixes
630
631 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
632
633 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
634 users to the appropriate place to report them.
635
636 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
637
638 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
639 generated, are removed.
640
641 All the generated headers are self-contained.
642
643 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
644
645 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
646 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
647 For instance the header generated from
648
649 %define api.prefix "calc"
650 %defines "lib/parse.h"
651
652 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
653
654 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
655
656 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
657 warnings such as:
658
659 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
660 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
661 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
662 *++yyvsp = yylval;
663 ^
664
665 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
666
667 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
668 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
669 addressed.
670
671 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
672
673 ** Bug fixes
674
675 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
676 suite have been fixed.
677
678 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
679
680 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
681 invalid C++. This is fixed.
682
683 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
684
685 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
686
687 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
688
689 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
690
691 ** Future Changes
692
693 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
694 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
695 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
696
697 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
698
699 write:
700
701 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
702
703 ** Bug fixes
704
705 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
706
707 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
708
709 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
710
711 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
712 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
713 now does.
714
715 ** Type names in actions
716
717 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
718 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
719
720 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
721
722 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
723 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
724
725 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
726
727 ** Future changes
728
729 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
730 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
731
732 *** K&R C parsers
733
734 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
735 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
736 compilers.
737
738 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
739
740 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
741 YYLTYPE.
742
743 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
744 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
745
746 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
747 %error-verbose.
748
749 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
750
751 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
752 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
753 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
754 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
755 it.
756
757 ** Generated Parser Headers
758
759 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
760
761 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
762 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
763
764 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
765 # define YY_FOO_H
766 ...
767 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
768
769 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
770
771 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
772 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
773
774 int bar_parse (void);
775
776 rather than
777
778 #define yyparse bar_parse
779 int yyparse (void);
780
781 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
782 single compilation unit.
783
784 *** Exported symbols in C++
785
786 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
787 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
788 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
789
790 *** YYLSP_NEEDED
791
792 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
793 longer defined.
794
795 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
796
797 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
798 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
799 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
800 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
801 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
802 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
803 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
804
805 The following examples compares both:
806
807 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
808 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
809 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
810 %% %%
811 exp: 'a'; exp: 'a';
812
813 bison generates:
814
815 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
816 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
817
818 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
819 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
820 > # if defined YYDEBUG
821 > # if YYDEBUG
822 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
823 > # else
824 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
825 > # endif
826 > # else
827 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
828 > # endif
829 # endif | # endif
830
831 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
832 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
833 # endif # endif
834
835 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
836 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
837 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
838 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
839 FOO = 258 FOO = 258
840 }; };
841 # endif # endif
842
843 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
844 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
845 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
846 { {
847 int ival; int ival;
848 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
849 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
850 #endif #endif
851
852 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
853
854 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
855
856 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
857
858 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
859
860 ** Future changes:
861
862 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
863
864 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
865
866 ** glr.c improvements:
867
868 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
869
870 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
871 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
872
873 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
874
875 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
876 when -std is passed to GCC).
877
878 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
879
880 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
881 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
882
883 ** Changes for C++:
884
885 *** C++11 compatibility:
886
887 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
888 or higher.
889
890 *** Header guards
891
892 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
893 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
894
895 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
896 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
897 ...
898 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
899
900 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
901 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
902 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
903
904 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
905
906 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
907 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
908 ...
909 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
910
911 *** C++ locations:
912
913 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
914 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
915 documentation were fixed.
916
917 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
918
919 ** Changes in the manual:
920
921 *** %printer is documented
922
923 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
924 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
925
926 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
927 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
928
929 *** Several improvements have been made:
930
931 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
932 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
933 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
934 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
935
936 ** Building bison:
937
938 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
939
940 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
941 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
942
943 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
944
945 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
946
947 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
948 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
949
950 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
951
952 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
953 halts in the middle of its course.
954
955 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
956
957 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
958
959 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
960 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
961 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
962 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
963 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
964
965 ** Named references:
966
967 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
968 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
969 actions code.
970
971 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
972 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
973 as named references:
974
975 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
976 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
977
978 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
979
980 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
981 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
982
983 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
984 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
985 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
986
987 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
988 will help to stabilize them.
989 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
990
991 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
992
993 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
994 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
995 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
996 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
997 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
998 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
999 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
1000 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
1001 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
1002
1003 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
1004 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
1005 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
1006 file with these directives:
1007
1008 %define lr.type lalr
1009 %define lr.type ielr
1010 %define lr.type canonical-lr
1011
1012 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
1013 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
1014 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
1015 manual.
1016
1017 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1018 stabilize them.
1019
1020 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
1021
1022 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
1023
1024 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
1025 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
1026 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
1027 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
1028 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
1029 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
1030 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
1031 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
1032 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
1033 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
1034 tokens.
1035
1036 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
1037 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
1038 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
1039 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
1040 inconsistent states.
1041
1042 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
1043 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
1044 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
1045 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
1046 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
1047 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
1048 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
1049 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
1050 power.
1051
1052 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
1053 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
1054
1055 %define parse.lac full
1056
1057 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
1058 details including a few caveats.
1059
1060 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
1061 stabilize it.
1062
1063 ** %define improvements:
1064
1065 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
1066
1067 Each of these command-line options
1068
1069 -D NAME[=VALUE]
1070 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
1071
1072 -F NAME[=VALUE]
1073 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
1074
1075 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
1076
1077 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
1078
1079 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
1080 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
1081 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
1082 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
1083
1084 *** Variables renamed:
1085
1086 The following %define variables
1087
1088 api.push_pull
1089 lr.keep_unreachable_states
1090
1091 have been renamed to
1092
1093 api.push-pull
1094 lr.keep-unreachable-states
1095
1096 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
1097 for backward compatibility.
1098
1099 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
1100
1101 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
1102 within quotations marks. For example,
1103
1104 %define api.push-pull "push"
1105
1106 can be rewritten as
1107
1108 %define api.push-pull push
1109
1110 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1111
1112 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1113
1114 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1115
1116 ** Character literals not of length one:
1117
1118 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1119 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1120 the following grammar to be the same token:
1121
1122 exp: exp '++'
1123 | exp '+' exp
1124 ;
1125
1126 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1127 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1128
1129 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1130
1131 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1132 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1133 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1134 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1135
1136 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1137
1138 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1139 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1140 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1141 and "last" members, instead of
1142
1143 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1144 do \
1145 if (N) \
1146 { \
1147 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1148 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1149 } \
1150 else \
1151 { \
1152 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1153 } \
1154 while (false)
1155
1156 use:
1157
1158 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1159 do \
1160 if (N) \
1161 { \
1162 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1163 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1164 } \
1165 else \
1166 { \
1167 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1168 } \
1169 while (false)
1170
1171 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1172
1173 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1174 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1175 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1176 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1177
1178 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1179
1180 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1181 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1182 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1183 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1184 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1185 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1186 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1187 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1188
1189 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1190
1191 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1192 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1193 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1194 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1195
1196 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1197
1198 instead of
1199
1200 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1201
1202 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1203 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1204 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1205 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1206 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1207 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1208 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1209
1210 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1211
1212 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1213 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1214 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1215 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1216 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1217
1218 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1219 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1220 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1221 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1222 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1223 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1224 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1225 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1226 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1227 shifted or discarded.
1228
1229 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1230 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1231 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1232 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1233
1234 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1235 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1236 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1237 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1238 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1239 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1240 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1241 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1242 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1243 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1244 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1245 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1246 by default.
1247
1248 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1249
1250 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1251
1252 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1253 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1254
1255 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1256
1257 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1258
1259 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1260
1261 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1262 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1263
1264 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1265
1266 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1267
1268 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1269 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1270 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1271 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1272 example:
1273
1274 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1275 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1276 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1277 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1278
1279 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1280 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1281 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1282 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1283
1284 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1285
1286 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1287 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1288
1289 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1290
1291 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1292
1293 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1294 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1295 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1296 suppress all warnings:
1297
1298 bison -Wnone gram.y
1299
1300 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1301
1302 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1303 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1304 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1305
1306 %left END 0
1307
1308 This bug has been fixed.
1309
1310 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1311
1312 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1313 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1314
1315 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1316 been fixed.
1317
1318 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1319
1320 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1321 been fixed.
1322
1323 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1324 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1325 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1326 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1327
1328 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1329
1330 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1331
1332 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1333 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1334 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1335 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1336 affected platforms.
1337
1338 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1339
1340 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1341 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1342 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1343 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1344 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1345 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1346 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1347 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1348 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1349
1350 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1351
1352 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1353 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1354 avoided.
1355
1356 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1357
1358 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1359
1360 %{CODE%}
1361
1362 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1363 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1364
1365 %code {CODE}
1366 %code requires {CODE}
1367 %code provides {CODE}
1368 %code top {CODE}
1369
1370 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1371 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1372 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1373 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1374 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1375
1376 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1377 is still considered experimental.
1378
1379 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1380
1381 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1382 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1383 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1384 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1385 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1386 specified by POSIX.
1387
1388 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1389 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1390 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1391 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1392 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1393 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1394 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1395
1396 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1397
1398 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1399 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1400 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1401 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1402 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1403 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1404 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1405 be removed altogether.
1406
1407 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1408 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1409 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1410 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1411 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1412 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1413 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1414 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1415 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1416 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1417
1418 ** Internationalization.
1419
1420 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1421 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1422 host system.
1423
1424 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1425
1426 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1427 declarations have been fixed.
1428
1429 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1430
1431 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1432 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1433
1434 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1435
1436 instead of
1437
1438 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1439
1440 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1441 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1442 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1443 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1444 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1445 feature.
1446
1447 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1448
1449 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1450
1451 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1452
1453 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1454 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1455 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1456 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1457 in future releases.
1458
1459 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1460
1461 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1462 fixed.
1463
1464 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1465
1466 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1467 are now deprecated:
1468
1469 %define NAME "VALUE"
1470
1471 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1472
1473 %define api.pure
1474
1475 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1476 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1477
1478 ** Push Parsing
1479
1480 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1481 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1482 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1483 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1484 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1485
1486 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1487 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1488
1489 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1490
1491 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1492 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1493
1494 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1495 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1496 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1497
1498 ** Java
1499
1500 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1501 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1502 %skeleton to select it.
1503
1504 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1505
1506 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1507 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1508 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1509
1510 ** %language
1511
1512 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1513 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1514 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1515 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1516
1517 ** XML Automaton Report
1518
1519 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1520 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1521 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1522 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1523
1524 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1525 %defines. For example:
1526
1527 %defines "parser.h"
1528
1529 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1530 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1531 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1532 instead of "unused".
1533
1534 ** Unreachable State Removal
1535
1536 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1537 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1538 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1539
1540 1. Removes unreachable states.
1541
1542 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1543 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1544 directives in existing grammar files.
1545
1546 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1547 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1548
1549 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1550
1551 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1552
1553 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1554 for further discussion.
1555
1556 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1557
1558 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1559 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1560 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1561 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1562 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1563 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1564 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1565 code.
1566
1567 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1568 name.
1569
1570 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1571 deprecated:
1572
1573 %file-prefix "parser"
1574 %name-prefix "c_"
1575 %output "parser.c"
1576
1577 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1578
1579 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1580 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1581 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1582 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1583 it:
1584
1585 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1586 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1587 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1588 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1589
1590 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1591 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1592 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1593 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1594
1595 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1596 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1597
1598 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1599
1600 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1601 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1602 about unused $2 in:
1603
1604 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1605
1606 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1607 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1608
1609 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1610
1611 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1612 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1613 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1614
1615 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1616 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1617
1618 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1619
1620 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1621 %printer's:
1622
1623 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1624 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1625 declared semantic type tags.
1626
1627 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1628 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1629 type tags.
1630
1631 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1632 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1633 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1634 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1635
1636 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1637 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1638 features.
1639
1640 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1641 details.
1642
1643 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1644 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1645 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1646
1647 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1648 completely removed from Bison.
1649
1650 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1651
1652 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1653 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1654 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1655 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1656 and is required by POSIX.
1657
1658 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1659 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1660
1661 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1662
1663 For example:
1664
1665 %union { char *string; }
1666 %token <string> STRING1
1667 %token <string> STRING2
1668 %type <string> string1
1669 %type <string> string2
1670 %union { char character; }
1671 %token <character> CHR
1672 %type <character> chr
1673 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1674 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1675 %destructor { } <character>
1676
1677 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1678 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1679 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1680 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1681 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1682
1683 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1684 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1685 future versions.]
1686
1687 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1688 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1689 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1690 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1691 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1692
1693 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1694 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1695
1696 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1697 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1698 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1699 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1700 declared after the first %union.
1701
1702 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1703 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1704 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1705 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1706 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1707 after the token definitions.
1708
1709 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1710 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1711
1712 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1713 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1714 %after-header.
1715
1716 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1717 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1718 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1719 convenient for you:
1720
1721 %before-header {
1722 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1723 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1724 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1725 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1726 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1727 }
1728 %start-header {
1729 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1730 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1731 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1732 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1733 }
1734 %union {
1735 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1736 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1737 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1738 }
1739 %end-header {
1740 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1741 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1742 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1743 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1744 * definitions. */
1745 }
1746 %after-header {
1747 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1748 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1749 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1750 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1751 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1752 }
1753
1754 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1755 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1756
1757 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1758 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1759
1760 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1761 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1762 in a future release.
1763
1764 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1765
1766 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1767 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1768
1769 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1770 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1771
1772 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1773
1774 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1775 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1776 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1777
1778 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1779
1780 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1781
1782 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1783 their contents together.
1784
1785 ** New warning: unused values
1786 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1787 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1788
1789 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1790 | exp "+" exp
1791 ;
1792
1793 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1794 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1795 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1796
1797 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1798 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1799 | exp "+" exp
1800 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1801 ;
1802
1803 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1804 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1805 values are used, e.g.:
1806
1807 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1808 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1809 ;
1810
1811 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1812 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1813
1814 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1815
1816 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1817 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1818
1819 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1820 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1821 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1822 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1823
1824 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1825 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1826 instead of warnings.
1827
1828 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1829 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1830 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1831
1832 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1833
1834 ** %require "VERSION"
1835 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1836 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1837
1838 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1839 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1840 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1841 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1842 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1843
1844 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1845 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1846 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1847 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1848
1849 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1850 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1851
1852 ** DJGPP support added.
1853 \f
1854 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1855
1856 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1857
1858 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1859 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1860 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1861 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1862 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1863 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1864
1865 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1866 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1867 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1868 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1869
1870 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1871 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1872 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1873
1874 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1875 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1876 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1877 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1878 unexpected "number"'.
1879 \f
1880 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1881
1882 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1883
1884 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1885 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1886 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1887 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1888 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1889
1890 - Error token location.
1891 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1892 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1893 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1894 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1895
1896 - Semicolon changes:
1897 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1898 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1899
1900 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1901 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1902 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1903 forget a closing quote.
1904
1905 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1906
1907 ** New features
1908
1909 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1910
1911 - New directive: %initial-action.
1912 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1913 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1914
1915 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1916 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1917
1918 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1919 This is a GNU extension.
1920
1921 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1922 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1923
1924 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1925
1926 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1927 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1928
1929 ** Bug fixes
1930
1931 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1932 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1933 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1934 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1935 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1936 these violations will become errors again.
1937
1938 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1939 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1940
1941 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1942 \f
1943 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1944
1945 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1946 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1947
1948 ** syntax error processing
1949
1950 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1951 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1952
1953 - %destructor
1954 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1955 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1956
1957 - %error-verbose
1958 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1959
1960 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1961 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1962
1963 ** POSIX conformance
1964
1965 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1966 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1967 compatibility with Yacc.
1968
1969 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1970 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1971 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1972 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1973 be consistent.
1974
1975 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1976 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1977
1978 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1979 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1980
1981 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1982 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1983
1984 - Yacc command and library now available
1985 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1986 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1987 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1988 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1989
1990 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1991
1992 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1993 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1994 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1995
1996 ** Other compatibility issues
1997
1998 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1999 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
2000 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
2001 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
2002 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
2003 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
2004
2005 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
2006 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
2007
2008 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
2009 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
2010
2011 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
2012 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
2013 withdrawn in a future release.
2014
2015 ** GLR parser notes
2016
2017 - GLR and inline
2018 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
2019 C keyword "inline".
2020
2021 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
2022 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
2023
2024 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
2025 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
2026 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
2027 shortcomings:
2028
2029 - a single argument only can be added,
2030 - their types are weak (void *),
2031 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
2032 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
2033
2034 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
2035 For instance:
2036
2037 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
2038 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
2039 %parse-param {int *randomness}
2040
2041 results in the following signatures:
2042
2043 int yylex (int *nastiness);
2044 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2045
2046 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
2047
2048 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
2049 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2050
2051 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
2052 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
2053 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
2054
2055 ** #line in output files
2056 - --no-line works properly.
2057
2058 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
2059 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
2060 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
2061 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
2062 \f
2063 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
2064
2065 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
2066
2067 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
2068
2069 ** GLR parsers
2070 Fix spurious parse errors.
2071
2072 ** Pure parsers
2073 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
2074 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
2075
2076 ** Type Clashes
2077 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
2078 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
2079
2080 untyped: ... typed;
2081
2082 but the converse remains an error:
2083
2084 typed: ... untyped;
2085
2086 ** Values of mid-rule actions
2087 The following code:
2088
2089 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
2090
2091 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
2092 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
2093 \f
2094 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
2095
2096 ** GLR parsing
2097 The declaration
2098 %glr-parser
2099 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
2100 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
2101 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
2102 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2103
2104 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
2105 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
2106
2107 ** Output Directory
2108 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2109 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2110 now creates "bar.c".
2111
2112 ** Undefined token
2113 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2114 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2115
2116 ** Unknown token numbers
2117 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2118 no longer the case.
2119
2120 ** Error token
2121 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2122 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2123 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2124 will be mapped onto another number.
2125
2126 ** Verbose error messages
2127 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2128 error recovery is possible.
2129
2130 ** End token
2131 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2132
2133 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2134 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2135 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2136 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2137 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2138 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2139 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2140 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2141 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2142
2143 ** Traces
2144 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2145
2146 ** Larger grammars
2147 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2148 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2149 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2150 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2151
2152 ** Explicit initial rule
2153 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2154 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2155 graphs as rule 0.
2156
2157 ** Useless rules
2158 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2159 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2160
2161 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2162 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2163
2164 ** Rules never reduced
2165 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2166 reported.
2167
2168 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
2169 On a grammar such as
2170
2171 %token useless useful
2172 %%
2173 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2174
2175 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2176 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2177
2178 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2179 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2180
2181 ** Default locations
2182 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2183 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2184 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2185 the computation of @$.
2186
2187 ** Token end-of-file
2188 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2189 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2190 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2191 For instance
2192 %token MYEOF 0
2193 or
2194 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2195
2196 ** Semantic parser
2197 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2198
2199 ** New translations
2200 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2201 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2202
2203 ** Incorrect token definitions
2204 When given
2205 %token 'a' "A"
2206 bison used to output
2207 #define 'a' 65
2208
2209 ** Token definitions as enums
2210 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2211 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2212 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2213
2214 ** Reports
2215 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2216 produces additional information:
2217 - itemset
2218 complete the core item sets with their closure
2219 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2220 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2221 - solved
2222 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2223 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2224 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2225
2226 ** Type clashes
2227 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2228 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2229
2230 %type <foo> bar
2231 %%
2232 bar: '0' {} '0';
2233
2234 This is fixed.
2235
2236 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2237 \f
2238 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2239
2240 ** C Skeleton
2241 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2242 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2243 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2244
2245 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2246 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2247 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2248 kludge will be disabled.
2249
2250 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2251 extended.
2252 \f
2253 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2254
2255 ** File name clashes are detected
2256 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2257 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2258
2259 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2260 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2261 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2262 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2263 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2264 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2265
2266 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2267 many portability hassles.
2268
2269 ** DJGPP support added.
2270
2271 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2272 \f
2273 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2274
2275 ** Fix C++ issues
2276 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2277 under some conditions.
2278
2279 ** Catch invalid @n
2280 As is done with $n.
2281 \f
2282 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2283
2284 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2285
2286 ** Portability fixes
2287
2288 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2289 \f
2290 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2291
2292 ** Many Bug Fixes
2293
2294 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2295 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2296 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2297 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2298 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2299
2300 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2301 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2302 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2303
2304 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2305 problems as on AIX.
2306
2307 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2308
2309 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2310 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2311
2312 ** User Actions
2313 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2314 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2315 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2316
2317 ** Better C++ compliance
2318 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2319 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2320
2321 ** Reduced Grammars
2322 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2323
2324 ** 64 bit hosts
2325 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2326
2327 ** Error messages
2328 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2329
2330 ** %expect
2331 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2332 any warning.
2333
2334 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2335
2336 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2337
2338 ** Swedish translation
2339
2340 ** Parse errors
2341 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2342 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2343 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2344
2345 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2346 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2347 previous allocations were not freed.
2348
2349 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2350 Some newlines were missing.
2351 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2352
2353 ** Fixed conflict report.
2354 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2355
2356 ** %expect
2357 Was not used.
2358 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2359
2360 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2361
2362 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2363
2364 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2365
2366 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2367 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2368
2369 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2370
2371 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2372 New.
2373
2374 ** --output
2375 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2376 \f
2377 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2378
2379 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2380 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2381 argument.
2382
2383 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2384 experiment.
2385
2386 ** Portability fixes.
2387 \f
2388 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2389
2390 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2391 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2392 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2393 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2394
2395 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2396
2397 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2398
2399 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2400
2401 ** Russian translation added.
2402
2403 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2404
2405 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2406
2407 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2408
2409 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2410
2411 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2412
2413 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2414 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2415
2416 ** New directives.
2417 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2418 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2419
2420 ** @$
2421 Automatic location tracking.
2422 \f
2423 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2424
2425 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2426
2427 ** Added NLS.
2428
2429 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2430
2431 ** There is now a FAQ.
2432 \f
2433 * Changes in version 1.27:
2434
2435 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2436 some systems has been fixed.
2437 \f
2438 * Changes in version 1.26:
2439
2440 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2441
2442 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2443
2444 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2445
2446 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2447
2448 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2449
2450 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2451
2452 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2453 not provide alloca().
2454 \f
2455 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2456
2457 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2458 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2459
2460 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2461 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2462 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2463
2464 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2465 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2466 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2467 purposes.
2468
2469 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2470 directives in the parser file.
2471
2472 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2473 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2474
2475 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2476 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2477 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2478 a switch statement body.
2479 \f
2480 * Changes in version 1.23:
2481
2482 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2483 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2484 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2485 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2486
2487 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2488 \f
2489 * Changes in version 1.22:
2490
2491 --help option added.
2492 \f
2493 * Changes in version 1.20:
2494
2495 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2496
2497 -----
2498
2499 Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2500
2501 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2502
2503 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2504 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2505 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2506 (at your option) any later version.
2507
2508 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2509 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2510 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2511 GNU General Public License for more details.
2512
2513 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2514 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2515
2516 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2517 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2518 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2519 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2520 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2521 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2522 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2523 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2524 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2525 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2526 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2527 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2528 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2529 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2530 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2531 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2532 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2533 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2534 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts parsers yystackp yyval yynerrs
2535 LocalWords: Théophile Ranquet Santet fno fnone stype associativity Tolmer
2536 LocalWords: Wprecedence Rassoul Wempty Paolo Bonzini parser's Michiel loc
2537 LocalWords: redeclaration sval fcaret reentrant XSLT xsl Wmaybe yyvsp Tedi
2538 LocalWords: pragmas noreturn untyped Rozenman unexpanded Wojciech Polak
2539 LocalWords: Alexandre MERCHANTABILITY
2540
2541 Local Variables:
2542 mode: outline
2543 fill-column: 76
2544 End: