3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 *** Errors in caret diagnostics
9 On some platforms, some errors could result in endless diagnostics.
11 *** Fixes of the -Werror option
13 Options such as "-Werror -Wno-error=foo" were still turning "foo"
14 diagnostics into errors instead of warnings. This is fixed.
16 Actually, for consistency with GCC, "-Wno-error=foo -Werror" now also
17 leaves "foo" diagnostics as warnings. Similarly, with "-Werror=foo
18 -Wno-error", "foo" diagnostics are now errors.
22 As demonstrated in the documentation, one can now leave spaces between
27 The yacc.1 man page is no longer installed if --disable-yacc was
30 *** Fixes in the test suite
32 Bugs and portability issues.
34 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0 (2013-07-25) [stable]
36 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
38 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
39 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
40 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
42 ** Backward incompatible changes
46 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
48 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
49 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
51 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
52 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
54 Missing semicolons at the end of actions are no longer added (as announced
57 *** Use of YACC='bison -y'
59 TL;DR: With Autoconf <= 2.69, pass -Wno-yacc to (AM_)YFLAGS if you use
62 Traditional Yacc generates 'y.tab.c' whatever the name of the input file.
63 Therefore Makefiles written for Yacc expect 'y.tab.c' (and possibly
64 'y.tab.h' and 'y.outout') to be generated from 'foo.y'.
66 To this end, for ages, AC_PROG_YACC, Autoconf's macro to look for an
67 implementation of Yacc, was using Bison as 'bison -y'. While it does
68 ensure compatible output file names, it also enables warnings for
69 incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc. In other words, 'bison -y' triggers
70 warnings for Bison extensions.
72 Autoconf 2.70+ fixes this incompatibility by using YACC='bison -o y.tab.c'
73 (which also generates 'y.tab.h' and 'y.output' when needed).
74 Alternatively, disable Yacc warnings by passing '-Wno-yacc' to your Yacc
75 flags (YFLAGS, or AM_YFLAGS with Automake).
79 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
81 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
82 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
83 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
84 preprocessor expansion:
86 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
88 This is fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
89 identifiers for user-provided variables.
91 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
93 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
94 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
96 *** Warnings about useless %pure-parser/%define api.pure are restored
98 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
100 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
105 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
106 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
107 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
109 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
110 the caret information only. For instance on:
117 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
118 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
122 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
123 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
127 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
129 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
130 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
132 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
134 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
135 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
136 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
138 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
139 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
140 errors (and only those):
142 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
144 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
145 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
147 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
149 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
151 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
152 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
154 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
155 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
156 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
158 *** The display of warnings is now richer
160 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
162 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
164 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
165 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
166 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
168 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
171 bison: warnings being treated as errors
172 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
176 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
178 *** Deprecated constructs
180 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
181 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
182 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
184 *** Useless semantic types
186 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
187 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
188 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
189 types that trigger the warning:
193 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
194 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
196 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
198 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
199 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
201 *** Undefined but unused symbols
203 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
204 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
207 %destructor {} symbol2
212 *** Useless destructors or printers
214 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
215 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
216 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
217 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
219 %token <type1> token1
223 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
224 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
228 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
229 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
233 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
235 compare the previous version of bison:
238 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
239 $ bison -Werror foo.y
240 bison: warnings being treated as errors
241 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
243 with the new behavior:
246 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
247 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
248 $ bison -Werror foo.y
249 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
250 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
252 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
257 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
262 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
263 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
264 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
269 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
270 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
272 ** Incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc
274 The 'yacc' category is no longer part of '-Wall', enable it explicitly
277 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
279 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
280 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
281 or more arguments. Instead of
283 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
284 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
285 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
286 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
290 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
292 ** Types of values for %define variables
294 Bison used to make no difference between '%define foo bar' and '%define
295 foo "bar"'. The former is now called a 'keyword value', and the latter a
296 'string value'. A third kind was added: 'code values', such as '%define
299 Keyword variables are used for fixed value sets, e.g.,
303 Code variables are used for value in the target language, e.g.,
305 %define api.value.type {struct semantic_type}
307 String variables are used remaining cases, e.g. file names.
309 ** Variable api.token.prefix
311 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
312 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
313 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
315 %token FILE for ERROR
316 %define api.token.prefix {TOK_}
318 start: FILE for ERROR;
320 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
321 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
322 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
323 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
325 ** Variable api.value.type
327 This new %define variable supersedes the #define macro YYSTYPE. The use
328 of YYSTYPE is discouraged. In particular, #defining YYSTYPE *and* either
329 using %union or %defining api.value.type results in undefined behavior.
331 Either define api.value.type, or use "%union":
338 %token <ival> INT "integer"
339 %token <sval> STRING "string"
340 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <ival>
341 %destructor { free ($$); } <sval>
344 yylval.ival = 42; return INT;
345 yylval.sval = "42"; return STRING;
347 The %define variable api.value.type supports both keyword and code values.
349 The keyword value 'union' means that the user provides genuine types, not
350 union member names such as "ival" and "sval" above (WARNING: will fail if
351 -y/--yacc/%yacc is enabled).
353 %define api.value.type union
354 %token <int> INT "integer"
355 %token <char *> STRING "string"
356 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <int>
357 %destructor { free ($$); } <char *>
360 yylval.INT = 42; return INT;
361 yylval.STRING = "42"; return STRING;
363 The keyword value variant is somewhat equivalent, but for C++ special
364 provision is made to allow classes to be used (more about this below).
366 %define api.value.type variant
367 %token <int> INT "integer"
368 %token <std::string> STRING "string"
370 Code values (in braces) denote user defined types. This is where YYSTYPE
388 %define api.value.type {struct my_value}
389 %token <u.ival> INT "integer"
390 %token <u.sval> STRING "string"
391 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <u.ival>
392 %destructor { free ($$); } <u.sval>
395 yylval.u.ival = 42; return INT;
396 yylval.u.sval = "42"; return STRING;
398 ** Variable parse.error
400 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
401 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
404 ** Renamed %define variables
406 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
407 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
409 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
410 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
411 namespace -> api.namespace
412 stype -> api.value.type
414 ** Semantic predicates
416 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
418 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
419 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
420 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
421 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
422 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
425 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
427 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
428 reduce/reduce conflicts.
430 ** Tokens are numbered in their order of appearance
432 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
434 With '%token A B', A had a number less than the one of B. However,
435 precedence declarations used to generate a reversed order. This is now
436 fixed, and introducing tokens with any of %token, %left, %right,
437 %precedence, or %nonassoc yields the same result.
439 When mixing declarations of tokens with a litteral character (e.g., 'a')
440 or with an identifier (e.g., B) in a precedence declaration, Bison
441 numbered the litteral characters first. For example
445 would lead to the tokens declared in this order: 'c' 'd' A B. Again, the
446 input order is now preserved.
448 These changes were made so that one can remove useless precedence and
449 associativity declarations (i.e., map %nonassoc, %left or %right to
450 %precedence, or to %token) and get exactly the same output.
452 ** Useless precedence and associativity
454 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
456 When developing and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
457 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
458 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
459 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
460 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
461 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
462 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
464 *** Precedence warning category
466 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
467 useless precedence and associativity directives.
469 *** Useless associativity
471 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
472 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
473 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
474 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
488 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
492 *** Useless precedence
494 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
495 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
496 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
497 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
501 exp: "var" '=' "number";
505 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
509 *** Useless precedence and associativity
511 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
516 exp: "var" '=' "number";
520 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
526 With help from Joel E. Denny and Gabriel Rassoul.
528 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
529 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
530 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
531 %empty. On the following grammar:
541 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
544 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
548 ** Java skeleton improvements
550 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
551 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
552 and "%define init_throws".
553 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
555 The Java skeleton now supports push parsing.
556 Contributed by Dennis Heimbigner.
558 ** C++ skeletons improvements
560 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
562 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
563 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
564 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
566 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
568 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
570 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
572 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
573 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
574 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
575 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
576 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
577 factory invoked by the user actions).
579 *** %define api.value.type variant
581 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
582 from Théophile Ranquet.
584 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
587 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
590 %type <::std::string> item;
591 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
594 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
598 %empty { /* Generates an empty string list. */ }
599 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
603 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
604 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
607 *** %define api.token.constructor
609 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
610 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
611 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
613 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
615 parser::location_type loc = ...;
617 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
619 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
621 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
627 There are operator- and operator-= for 'location'. Negative line/column
628 increments can no longer underflow the resulting value.
630 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7.1 (2013-04-15) [stable]
634 *** Fix compiler attribute portability (yacc.c)
636 With locations enabled, __attribute__ was used unprotected.
638 *** Fix some compiler warnings (lalr1.cc)
640 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
644 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
646 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
648 ** Diagnostics are improved
650 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
652 *** Changes in the format of error messages
654 This used to be the format of many error reports:
656 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
657 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
661 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
662 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
664 *** New format for error reports: carets
666 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
668 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
671 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
677 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
678 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
680 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
681 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
683 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
684 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
686 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
687 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
690 The default behavior for now is still not to display these unless
691 explicitly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
692 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
695 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
697 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
698 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
699 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
700 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
701 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
704 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
705 "%define api.pure full".
707 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
709 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
710 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
711 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
712 then responsible to define her type.
714 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
715 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
718 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
719 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
722 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
723 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
726 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
728 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
729 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
730 before re-throwing the exception.
732 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
735 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
737 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
739 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
740 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
741 numbered and left-justified.
743 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
744 diamond shaped nodes.
746 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
747 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
749 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
751 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
752 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
756 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
757 have been fixed and extended.
759 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
760 were not properly documented.
762 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
764 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
766 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
767 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
768 reporting them to us.
772 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
773 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
776 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
778 Null characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
780 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
781 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
783 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
785 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
787 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
791 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
793 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
794 users to the appropriate place to report them.
796 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
798 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
799 generated, are removed.
801 All the generated headers are self-contained.
803 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
805 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
806 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
807 For instance the header generated from
809 %define api.prefix "calc"
810 %defines "lib/parse.h"
812 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
814 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
816 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
819 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
820 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
821 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
825 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
827 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
828 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
831 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
835 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
836 suite have been fixed.
838 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
840 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
841 invalid C++. This is fixed.
843 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
845 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
847 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
849 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
853 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
854 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
855 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
857 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
861 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
865 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
867 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
869 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
871 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
872 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
875 ** Type names in actions
877 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
878 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
880 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
882 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
883 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
885 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
889 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
890 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
894 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
895 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
898 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
900 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
903 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
904 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
906 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
909 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
911 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
912 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
913 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
914 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
917 ** Generated Parser Headers
919 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
921 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
922 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
927 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
929 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
931 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
932 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
934 int bar_parse (void);
938 #define yyparse bar_parse
941 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
942 single compilation unit.
944 *** Exported symbols in C++
946 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
947 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
948 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
952 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
955 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
957 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
958 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
959 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
960 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
961 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
962 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
963 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
965 The following examples compares both:
967 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
968 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
969 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
975 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
976 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
978 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
979 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
980 > # if defined YYDEBUG
982 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
984 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
987 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
991 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
992 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
995 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
996 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
997 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
998 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
1003 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
1004 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
1005 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
1008 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
1009 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
1012 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
1014 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
1016 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
1018 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
1022 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
1024 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
1026 ** glr.c improvements:
1028 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
1030 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
1031 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
1033 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
1035 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
1036 when -std is passed to GCC).
1038 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
1040 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
1041 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
1045 *** C++11 compatibility:
1047 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
1052 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
1053 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
1055 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
1056 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
1058 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
1060 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
1061 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
1062 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
1064 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
1066 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1067 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1069 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1073 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
1074 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
1075 documentation were fixed.
1077 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
1079 ** Changes in the manual:
1081 *** %printer is documented
1083 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
1084 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
1086 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
1087 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
1089 *** Several improvements have been made:
1091 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
1092 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
1093 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
1094 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
1098 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
1100 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
1101 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
1103 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
1105 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
1107 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
1108 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
1110 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
1112 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
1113 halts in the middle of its course.
1115 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
1117 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
1119 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
1120 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
1121 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
1122 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
1123 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
1125 ** Named references:
1127 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
1128 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
1131 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
1132 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
1133 as named references:
1135 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
1136 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
1138 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
1140 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
1141 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
1143 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
1144 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
1145 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
1147 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
1148 will help to stabilize them.
1149 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
1151 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
1153 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
1154 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
1155 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
1156 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
1157 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
1158 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
1159 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
1160 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
1161 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
1163 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
1164 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
1165 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
1166 file with these directives:
1168 %define lr.type lalr
1169 %define lr.type ielr
1170 %define lr.type canonical-lr
1172 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
1173 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
1174 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
1177 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1180 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
1182 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
1184 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
1185 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
1186 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
1187 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
1188 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
1189 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
1190 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
1191 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
1192 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
1193 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
1196 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
1197 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
1198 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
1199 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
1200 inconsistent states.
1202 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
1203 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
1204 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
1205 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
1206 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
1207 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
1208 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
1209 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
1212 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
1213 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
1215 %define parse.lac full
1217 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
1218 details including a few caveats.
1220 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
1223 ** %define improvements:
1225 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
1227 Each of these command-line options
1230 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
1233 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
1235 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
1237 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
1239 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
1240 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
1241 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
1242 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
1244 *** Variables renamed:
1246 The following %define variables
1249 lr.keep_unreachable_states
1251 have been renamed to
1254 lr.keep-unreachable-states
1256 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
1257 for backward compatibility.
1259 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
1261 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
1262 within quotations marks. For example,
1264 %define api.push-pull "push"
1268 %define api.push-pull push
1270 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1272 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1274 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1276 ** Character literals not of length one:
1278 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1279 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1280 the following grammar to be the same token:
1286 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1287 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1289 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1291 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1292 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1293 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1294 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1296 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1298 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1299 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1300 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1301 and "last" members, instead of
1303 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1307 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1308 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1312 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1318 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1322 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1323 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1327 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1331 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1333 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1334 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1335 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1336 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1338 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1340 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1341 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1342 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1343 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1344 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1345 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1346 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1347 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1349 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1351 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1352 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1353 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1354 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1356 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1360 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1362 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1363 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1364 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1365 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1366 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1367 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1368 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1370 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1372 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1373 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1374 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1375 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1376 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1378 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1379 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1380 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1381 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1382 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1383 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1384 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1385 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1386 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1387 shifted or discarded.
1389 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1390 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1391 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1392 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1394 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1395 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1396 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1397 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1398 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1399 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1400 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1401 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1402 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1403 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1404 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1405 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1408 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1410 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1412 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1413 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1415 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1417 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1419 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1421 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1422 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1424 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1426 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1428 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1429 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1430 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1431 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1434 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1435 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1436 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1437 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1439 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1440 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1441 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1442 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1444 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1446 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1447 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1449 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1451 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1453 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1454 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1455 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1456 suppress all warnings:
1460 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1462 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1463 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1464 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1468 This bug has been fixed.
1470 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1472 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1473 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1475 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1478 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1480 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1483 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1484 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1485 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1486 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1488 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1490 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1492 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1493 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1494 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1495 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1498 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1500 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1501 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1502 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1503 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1504 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1505 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1506 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1507 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1508 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1510 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1512 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1513 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1516 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1518 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1522 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1523 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1526 %code requires {CODE}
1527 %code provides {CODE}
1530 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1531 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1532 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1533 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1534 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1536 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1537 is still considered experimental.
1539 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1541 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1542 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1543 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1544 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1545 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1548 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1549 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1550 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1551 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1552 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1553 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1554 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1556 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1558 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1559 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1560 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1561 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1562 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1563 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1564 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1565 be removed altogether.
1567 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1568 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1569 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1570 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1571 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1572 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1573 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1574 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1575 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1576 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1578 ** Internationalization.
1580 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1581 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1584 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1586 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1587 declarations have been fixed.
1589 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1591 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1592 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1594 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1598 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1600 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1601 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1602 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1603 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1604 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1607 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1609 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1611 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1613 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1614 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1615 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1616 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1619 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1621 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1624 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1626 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1629 %define NAME "VALUE"
1631 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1635 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1636 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1640 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1641 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1642 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1643 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1644 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1646 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1647 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1649 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1651 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1652 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1654 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1655 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1656 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1660 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1661 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1662 %skeleton to select it.
1664 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1666 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1667 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1668 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1672 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1673 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1674 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1675 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1677 ** XML Automaton Report
1679 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1680 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1681 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1682 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1684 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1685 %defines. For example:
1689 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1690 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1691 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1692 instead of "unused".
1694 ** Unreachable State Removal
1696 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1697 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1698 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1700 1. Removes unreachable states.
1702 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1703 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1704 directives in existing grammar files.
1706 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1707 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1709 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1711 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1713 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1714 for further discussion.
1716 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1718 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1719 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1720 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1721 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1722 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1723 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1724 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1727 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1730 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1733 %file-prefix "parser"
1737 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1739 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1740 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1741 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1742 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1745 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1746 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1747 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1748 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1750 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1751 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1752 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1753 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1755 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1756 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1758 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1760 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1761 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1764 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1766 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1767 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1769 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1771 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1772 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1773 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1775 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1776 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1778 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1780 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1783 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1784 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1785 declared semantic type tags.
1787 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1788 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1791 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1792 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1793 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1794 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1796 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1797 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1800 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1803 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1804 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1805 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1807 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1808 completely removed from Bison.
1810 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1812 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1813 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1814 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1815 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1816 and is required by POSIX.
1818 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1819 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1821 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1825 %union { char *string; }
1826 %token <string> STRING1
1827 %token <string> STRING2
1828 %type <string> string1
1829 %type <string> string2
1830 %union { char character; }
1831 %token <character> CHR
1832 %type <character> chr
1833 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1834 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1835 %destructor { } <character>
1837 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1838 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1839 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1840 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1841 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1843 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1844 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1847 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1848 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1849 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1850 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1851 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1853 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1854 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1856 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1857 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1858 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1859 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1860 declared after the first %union.
1862 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1863 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1864 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1865 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1866 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1867 after the token definitions.
1869 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1870 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1872 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1873 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1876 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1877 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1878 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1882 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1883 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1884 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1885 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1886 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1889 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1890 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1891 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1892 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1895 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1896 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1897 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1900 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1901 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1902 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1903 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1907 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1908 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1909 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1910 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1911 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1914 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1915 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1917 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1918 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1920 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1921 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1922 in a future release.
1924 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1926 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1927 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1929 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1930 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1932 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1934 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1935 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1936 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1938 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1940 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1942 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1943 their contents together.
1945 ** New warning: unused values
1946 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1947 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1949 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1953 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1954 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1955 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1957 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1958 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1960 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1963 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1964 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1965 values are used, e.g.:
1967 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1968 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1971 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1972 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1974 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1976 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1977 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1979 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1980 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1981 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1982 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1984 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1985 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1986 instead of warnings.
1988 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1989 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1990 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1992 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1994 ** %require "VERSION"
1995 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1996 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1998 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1999 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
2000 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
2001 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
2002 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
2004 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
2005 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
2006 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
2007 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
2009 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
2010 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
2012 ** DJGPP support added.
2014 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
2016 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
2018 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
2019 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
2020 language is still English. For details, please see the new
2021 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
2022 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
2023 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
2025 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
2026 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
2027 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
2028 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
2030 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
2031 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
2032 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
2034 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
2035 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
2036 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
2037 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
2038 unexpected "number"'.
2040 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
2042 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
2044 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
2045 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
2046 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
2047 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
2048 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
2050 - Error token location.
2051 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
2052 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
2053 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
2054 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
2056 - Semicolon changes:
2057 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
2058 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
2060 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
2061 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
2062 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
2063 forget a closing quote.
2065 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
2069 - GLR grammars now support locations.
2071 - New directive: %initial-action.
2072 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
2073 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
2075 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
2076 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
2078 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
2079 This is a GNU extension.
2081 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
2082 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
2084 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
2086 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
2087 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
2091 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
2092 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
2093 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
2094 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
2095 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
2096 these violations will become errors again.
2098 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
2099 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
2101 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
2103 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
2105 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
2106 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
2108 ** syntax error processing
2110 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
2111 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
2114 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
2115 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
2118 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
2120 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
2121 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
2123 ** POSIX conformance
2125 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
2126 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
2127 compatibility with Yacc.
2129 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
2130 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
2131 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
2132 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
2135 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
2136 declared before use. C99 requires this.
2138 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
2139 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
2141 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
2142 output as "foo\\bar.y".
2144 - Yacc command and library now available
2145 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
2146 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
2147 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
2148 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
2150 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
2152 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
2153 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
2154 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
2156 ** Other compatibility issues
2158 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
2159 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
2160 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
2161 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
2162 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
2163 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
2165 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
2166 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
2168 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
2169 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
2171 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
2172 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
2173 withdrawn in a future release.
2178 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
2181 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
2182 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
2184 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
2185 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
2186 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
2189 - a single argument only can be added,
2190 - their types are weak (void *),
2191 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
2192 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
2194 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
2197 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
2198 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
2199 %parse-param {int *randomness}
2201 results in the following signatures:
2203 int yylex (int *nastiness);
2204 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2206 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
2208 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
2209 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2211 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
2212 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
2213 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
2215 ** #line in output files
2216 - --no-line works properly.
2218 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
2219 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
2220 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
2221 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
2223 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
2225 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
2227 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
2230 Fix spurious parse errors.
2233 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
2234 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
2237 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
2238 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
2242 but the converse remains an error:
2246 ** Values of mid-rule actions
2249 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
2251 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
2252 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
2254 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
2259 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
2260 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
2261 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
2262 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2264 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
2265 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
2268 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2269 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2270 now creates "bar.c".
2273 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2274 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2276 ** Unknown token numbers
2277 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2281 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2282 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2283 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2284 will be mapped onto another number.
2286 ** Verbose error messages
2287 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2288 error recovery is possible.
2291 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2293 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2294 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2295 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2296 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2297 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2298 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2299 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2300 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2301 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2304 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2307 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2308 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2309 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2310 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2312 ** Explicit initial rule
2313 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2314 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2318 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2319 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2321 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2322 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2324 ** Rules never reduced
2325 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2328 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
2329 On a grammar such as
2331 %token useless useful
2333 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2335 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2336 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2338 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2339 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2341 ** Default locations
2342 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2343 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2344 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2345 the computation of @$.
2347 ** Token end-of-file
2348 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2349 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2350 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2354 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2357 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2360 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2361 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2363 ** Incorrect token definitions
2366 bison used to output
2369 ** Token definitions as enums
2370 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2371 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2372 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2375 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2376 produces additional information:
2378 complete the core item sets with their closure
2379 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2380 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2382 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2383 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2384 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2387 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2388 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2396 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2398 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2401 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2402 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2403 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2405 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2406 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2407 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2408 kludge will be disabled.
2410 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2413 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2415 ** File name clashes are detected
2416 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2417 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2419 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2420 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2421 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2422 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2423 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2424 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2426 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2427 many portability hassles.
2429 ** DJGPP support added.
2431 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2433 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2436 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2437 under some conditions.
2442 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2444 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2446 ** Portability fixes
2448 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2450 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2454 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2455 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2456 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2457 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2458 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2460 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2461 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2462 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2464 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2467 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2469 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2470 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2473 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2474 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2475 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2477 ** Better C++ compliance
2478 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2479 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2482 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2485 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2488 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2491 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2494 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2496 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2498 ** Swedish translation
2501 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2502 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2503 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2505 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2506 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2507 previous allocations were not freed.
2509 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2510 Some newlines were missing.
2511 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2513 ** Fixed conflict report.
2514 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2518 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2520 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2522 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2524 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2526 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2527 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2529 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2531 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2535 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2537 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2539 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2540 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2543 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2546 ** Portability fixes.
2548 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2550 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2551 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2552 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2553 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2555 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2557 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2559 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2561 ** Russian translation added.
2563 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2565 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2567 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2569 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2571 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2573 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2574 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2577 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2578 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2581 Automatic location tracking.
2583 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2585 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2589 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2591 ** There is now a FAQ.
2593 * Changes in version 1.27:
2595 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2596 some systems has been fixed.
2598 * Changes in version 1.26:
2600 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2602 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2604 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2606 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2608 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2610 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2612 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2613 not provide alloca().
2615 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2617 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2618 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2620 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2621 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2622 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2624 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2625 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2626 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2629 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2630 directives in the parser file.
2632 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2633 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2635 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2636 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2637 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2638 a switch statement body.
2640 * Changes in version 1.23:
2642 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2643 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2644 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2645 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2647 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2649 * Changes in version 1.22:
2651 --help option added.
2653 * Changes in version 1.20:
2655 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2659 Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2661 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2663 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2664 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2665 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2666 (at your option) any later version.
2668 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2669 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2670 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2671 GNU General Public License for more details.
2673 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2674 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2676 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2677 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2678 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2679 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2680 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2681 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2682 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2683 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2684 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2685 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2686 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2687 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2688 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2689 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2690 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2691 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2692 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2693 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2694 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts parsers yystackp yyval yynerrs
2695 LocalWords: Théophile Ranquet Santet fno fnone stype associativity Tolmer
2696 LocalWords: Wprecedence Rassoul Wempty Paolo Bonzini parser's Michiel loc
2697 LocalWords: redeclaration sval fcaret reentrant XSLT xsl Wmaybe yyvsp Tedi
2698 LocalWords: pragmas noreturn untyped Rozenman unexpanded Wojciech Polak
2699 LocalWords: Alexandre MERCHANTABILITY yytype