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