3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 Bugs in the test suite have been fixed.
9 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
10 users to the appropriate place to report them.
12 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
14 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
15 generated, are removed.
17 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
19 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
20 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
21 For instance the header generated from
23 %define api.prefix "calc"
24 %defines "lib/parse.h"
26 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
28 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
32 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
33 suite have been fixed.
35 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
37 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
38 invalid C++. This is fixed.
40 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
42 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
44 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
46 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
50 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
51 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
52 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
54 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
58 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
62 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
64 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
66 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
68 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
69 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
72 ** Type names in actions
74 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
75 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
77 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
79 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
80 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
82 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
86 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
87 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
91 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
92 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
95 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
97 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
100 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
101 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
103 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
106 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
108 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
109 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
110 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
111 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
114 ** Generated Parser Headers
116 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
118 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
119 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
124 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
126 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
128 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
129 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
131 int bar_parse (void);
135 #define yyparse bar_parse
138 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
139 single compilation unit.
141 *** Exported symbols in C++
143 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
144 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
145 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
149 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
152 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
154 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
155 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
156 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
157 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
158 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
159 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
160 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
162 The following examples compares both:
164 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
165 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
166 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
172 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
173 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
175 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
176 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
177 > # if defined YYDEBUG
179 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
181 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
184 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
188 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
189 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
192 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
193 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
194 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
195 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
200 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
201 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
202 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
205 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
206 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
209 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
211 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
213 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
215 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
219 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
221 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
223 ** glr.c improvements:
225 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
227 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
228 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
230 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
232 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
233 when -std is passed to GCC).
235 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
237 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
238 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
242 *** C++11 compatibility:
244 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
249 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
250 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
252 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
253 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
255 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
257 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
258 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
259 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
261 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
263 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
264 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
266 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
270 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
271 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
272 documentation were fixed.
274 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
276 ** Changes in the manual:
278 *** %printer is documented
280 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
281 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
283 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
284 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
286 *** Several improvements have been made:
288 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
289 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
290 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
291 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
295 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
297 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
298 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
300 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
302 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
304 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
305 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
307 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
309 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
310 halts in the middle of its course.
312 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
314 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
316 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
317 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
318 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
319 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
320 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
324 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
325 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
328 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
329 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
332 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
333 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
335 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
337 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
338 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
340 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
341 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
342 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
344 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
345 will help to stabilize them.
347 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
349 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
350 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
351 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
352 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
353 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
354 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
355 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
356 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
357 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
359 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
360 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
361 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
362 file with these directives:
366 %define lr.type canonical-lr
368 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
369 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
370 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
373 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
376 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
378 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
379 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
380 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
381 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
382 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
383 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
384 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
385 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
386 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
387 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
390 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
391 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
392 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
393 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
396 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
397 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
398 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
399 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
400 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
401 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
402 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
403 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
406 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
407 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
409 %define parse.lac full
411 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
412 details including a few caveats.
414 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
417 ** %define improvements:
419 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
421 Each of these command-line options
424 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
427 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
429 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
431 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
433 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
434 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
435 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
436 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
438 *** Variables renamed:
440 The following %define variables
443 lr.keep_unreachable_states
448 lr.keep-unreachable-states
450 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
451 for backward compatibility.
453 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
455 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
456 within quotations marks. For example,
458 %define api.push-pull "push"
462 %define api.push-pull push
464 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
466 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
468 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
470 ** Character literals not of length one:
472 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
473 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
474 the following grammar to be the same token:
480 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
481 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
483 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
485 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
486 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
487 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
488 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
490 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
492 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
493 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
494 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
495 and "last" members, instead of
497 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
501 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
502 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
506 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
512 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
516 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
517 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
521 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
525 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
527 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
528 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
529 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
530 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
532 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
534 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
535 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
536 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
537 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
538 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
539 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
540 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
541 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
543 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
545 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
546 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
547 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
548 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
550 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
554 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
556 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
557 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
558 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
559 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
560 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
561 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
562 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
564 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
566 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
567 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
568 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
569 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
570 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
572 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
573 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
574 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
575 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
576 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
577 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
578 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
579 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
580 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
581 shifted or discarded.
583 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
584 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
585 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
586 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
588 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
589 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
590 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
591 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
592 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
593 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
594 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
595 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
596 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
597 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
598 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
599 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
602 ** Java skeleton fixes:
604 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
606 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
607 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
609 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
611 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
613 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
615 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
616 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
618 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
620 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
622 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
623 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
624 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
625 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
628 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
629 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
630 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
631 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
633 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
634 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
635 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
636 then have no effect on the conflict report.
638 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
640 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
641 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
643 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
645 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
647 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
648 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
649 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
650 suppress all warnings:
654 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
656 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
657 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
658 produced an assertion failure. For example:
662 This bug has been fixed.
664 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
666 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
667 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
669 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
672 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
674 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
677 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
678 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
679 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
680 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
682 ** Minor documentation fixes.
684 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
686 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
687 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
688 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
689 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
692 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
694 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
695 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
696 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
697 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
698 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
699 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
700 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
701 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
702 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
704 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
706 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
707 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
710 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
712 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
716 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
717 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
720 %code requires {CODE}
721 %code provides {CODE}
724 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
725 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
726 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
727 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
728 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
730 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
731 is still considered experimental.
733 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
735 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
736 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
737 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
738 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
739 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
742 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
743 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
744 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
745 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
746 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
747 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
748 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
750 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
752 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
753 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
754 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
755 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
756 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
757 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
758 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
759 be removed altogether.
761 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
762 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
763 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
764 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
765 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
766 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
767 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
768 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
769 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
770 2.4.2 is not necessary.
772 ** Internationalization.
774 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
775 message translations were not installed although supported by the
778 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
780 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
781 declarations have been fixed.
783 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
785 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
786 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
788 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
792 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
794 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
795 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
796 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
797 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
798 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
801 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
803 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
805 ** %language is an experimental feature.
807 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
808 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
809 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
810 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
813 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
815 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
818 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
820 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
825 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
829 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
830 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
834 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
835 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
836 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
837 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
838 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
840 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
841 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
843 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
845 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
846 feedback will help to stabilize it.
848 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
849 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
850 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
854 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
855 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
856 %skeleton to select it.
858 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
860 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
861 feedback will help to stabilize it.
865 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
866 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
867 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
868 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
870 ** XML Automaton Report
872 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
873 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
874 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
876 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
877 %defines. For example:
881 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
882 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
883 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
886 ** Unreachable State Removal
888 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
889 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
890 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
892 1. Removes unreachable states.
894 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
895 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
896 directives in existing grammar files.
898 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
899 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
901 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
903 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
905 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
906 for further discussion.
908 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
910 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
911 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
912 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
913 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
914 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
915 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
916 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
919 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
922 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
925 %file-prefix "parser"
929 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
931 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
932 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
933 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
934 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
937 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
938 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
939 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
940 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
942 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
943 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
944 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
945 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
947 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
948 determine whether they should become permanent features.
950 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
952 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
953 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
956 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
958 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
959 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
961 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
963 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
964 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
965 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
967 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
968 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
970 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
972 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
975 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
976 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
977 declared semantic type tags.
979 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
980 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
983 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
984 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
985 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
986 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
988 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
989 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
992 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
995 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
996 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
997 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
999 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1000 completely removed from Bison.
1002 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1004 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1005 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1006 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1007 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1008 and is required by POSIX.
1010 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1011 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1013 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1017 %union { char *string; }
1018 %token <string> STRING1
1019 %token <string> STRING2
1020 %type <string> string1
1021 %type <string> string2
1022 %union { char character; }
1023 %token <character> CHR
1024 %type <character> chr
1025 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1026 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1027 %destructor { } <character>
1029 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1030 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1031 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1032 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1033 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1035 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1036 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1039 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1040 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1041 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1042 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1043 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1045 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1046 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1048 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1049 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1050 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1051 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1052 declared after the first %union.
1054 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1055 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1056 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1057 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1058 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1059 after the token definitions.
1061 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1062 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1064 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1065 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1068 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1069 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1070 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1074 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1075 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1076 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1077 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1078 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1081 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1082 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1083 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1084 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1087 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1088 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1089 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1092 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1093 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1094 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1095 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1099 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1100 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1101 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1102 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1103 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1106 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1107 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1109 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1110 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1112 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1113 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1114 in a future release.
1116 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1118 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1119 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1121 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1122 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1124 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1126 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1127 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1128 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1130 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1132 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1134 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1135 their contents together.
1137 ** New warning: unused values
1138 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1139 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1141 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1145 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1146 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1147 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1149 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1150 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1152 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1155 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1156 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1157 values are used, e.g.:
1159 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1160 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1163 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1164 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1166 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1168 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1169 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1171 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1172 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1173 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1174 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1176 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1177 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1178 instead of warnings.
1180 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1181 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1182 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1184 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1186 ** %require "VERSION"
1187 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1188 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1190 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1191 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1192 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1193 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1194 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1196 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1197 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1198 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1199 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1201 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1202 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1204 ** DJGPP support added.
1206 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1208 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1210 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1211 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1212 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1213 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1214 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1215 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1217 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1218 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1219 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1220 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1222 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1223 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1224 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1226 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1227 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1228 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1229 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1230 unexpected "number"'.
1232 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1234 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1236 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1237 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1238 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1239 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1240 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1242 - Error token location.
1243 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1244 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1245 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1246 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1248 - Semicolon changes:
1249 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1250 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1252 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1253 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1254 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1255 forget a closing quote.
1257 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1261 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1263 - New directive: %initial-action.
1264 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1265 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1267 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1268 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1270 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1271 This is a GNU extension.
1273 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1274 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1276 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1278 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1279 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1283 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1284 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1285 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1286 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1287 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1288 these violations will become errors again.
1290 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1291 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1293 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1295 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1297 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1298 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1300 ** syntax error processing
1302 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1303 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1306 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1307 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1310 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1312 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1313 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1315 ** POSIX conformance
1317 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1318 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1319 compatibility with Yacc.
1321 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1322 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1323 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1324 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1327 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1328 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1330 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1331 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1333 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1334 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1336 - Yacc command and library now available
1337 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1338 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1339 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1340 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1342 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1344 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1345 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1346 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1348 ** Other compatibility issues
1350 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1351 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1352 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1353 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1354 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1355 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1357 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1358 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1360 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1361 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1363 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1364 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1365 withdrawn in a future release.
1370 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1373 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1374 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1376 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1377 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1378 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1381 - a single argument only can be added,
1382 - their types are weak (void *),
1383 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1384 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1386 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1389 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1390 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1391 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1393 results in the following signatures:
1395 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1396 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1398 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1400 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1401 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1403 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1404 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1405 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1407 ** #line in output files
1408 - --no-line works properly.
1410 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1411 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1412 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1413 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1415 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1417 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1419 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1422 Fix spurious parse errors.
1425 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1426 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1429 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1430 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1434 but the converse remains an error:
1438 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1441 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1443 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1444 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1446 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1451 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1452 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1453 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1454 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1456 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1457 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1460 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1461 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1462 now creates "bar.c".
1465 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1466 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1468 ** Unknown token numbers
1469 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1473 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1474 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1475 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1476 will be mapped onto another number.
1478 ** Verbose error messages
1479 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1480 error recovery is possible.
1483 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1485 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1486 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1487 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1488 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1489 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1490 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1491 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1492 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1493 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1496 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1499 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1500 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1501 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1502 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1504 ** Explicit initial rule
1505 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1506 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1510 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1511 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1513 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1514 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1516 ** Rules never reduced
1517 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1520 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1521 On a grammar such as
1523 %token useless useful
1525 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1527 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1528 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1530 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1531 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1533 ** Default locations
1534 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1535 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1536 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1537 the computation of @$.
1539 ** Token end-of-file
1540 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1541 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1542 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1546 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1549 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1552 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1553 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1555 ** Incorrect token definitions
1558 bison used to output
1561 ** Token definitions as enums
1562 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1563 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1564 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1567 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1568 produces additional information:
1570 complete the core item sets with their closure
1571 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1572 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1574 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1575 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1576 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1579 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1580 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1588 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1590 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1593 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1594 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1595 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1597 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1598 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1599 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1600 kludge will be disabled.
1602 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1605 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1607 ** File name clashes are detected
1608 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1609 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1611 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1612 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1613 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1614 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1615 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1616 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1618 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1619 many portability hassles.
1621 ** DJGPP support added.
1623 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
1625 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1628 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1629 under some conditions.
1634 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1636 ** Fix Yacc output file names
1638 ** Portability fixes
1640 ** Italian, Dutch translations
1642 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1646 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
1647 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1648 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1649 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1650 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
1652 ** Use of alloca in parsers
1653 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1654 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1656 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1659 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1661 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1662 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1665 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1666 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1667 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1669 ** Better C++ compliance
1670 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1671 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1674 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1677 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1680 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1683 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1686 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1688 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1690 ** Swedish translation
1693 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1694 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1695 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1697 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1698 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1699 previous allocations were not freed.
1701 ** Fixed verbose output file.
1702 Some newlines were missing.
1703 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1705 ** Fixed conflict report.
1706 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1710 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1712 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1714 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1716 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1718 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1719 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1721 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1723 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1727 New, aliasing "--output-file".
1729 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1731 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
1732 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
1735 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
1738 ** Portability fixes.
1740 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1742 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1743 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1744 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1745 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1747 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
1749 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1751 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
1753 ** Russian translation added.
1755 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
1757 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
1759 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
1761 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
1763 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
1765 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
1766 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
1769 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
1770 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
1773 Automatic location tracking.
1775 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
1777 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
1781 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
1783 ** There is now a FAQ.
1785 * Changes in version 1.27:
1787 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
1788 some systems has been fixed.
1790 * Changes in version 1.26:
1792 ** Bison now uses Automake.
1794 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
1796 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
1798 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
1800 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
1802 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
1804 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
1805 not provide alloca().
1807 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
1809 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
1810 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
1812 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
1813 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
1814 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
1816 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
1817 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
1818 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
1821 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
1822 directives in the parser file.
1824 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
1825 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
1827 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
1828 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
1829 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
1830 a switch statement body.
1832 * Changes in version 1.23:
1834 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
1835 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
1836 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
1837 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
1839 Line numbers in output file corrected.
1841 * Changes in version 1.22:
1843 --help option added.
1845 * Changes in version 1.20:
1847 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
1851 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1853 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
1855 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1856 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1857 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1858 (at your option) any later version.
1860 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1861 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1862 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1863 GNU General Public License for more details.
1865 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1866 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1868 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
1869 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
1870 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
1871 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
1872 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
1873 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
1874 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
1875 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
1876 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
1877 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
1878 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
1879 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
1880 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
1881 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
1882 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
1883 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
1884 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
1885 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp