3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C,
8 and remove the definition of yystype (removal announced since Bison
11 ** Changes in regular C parsers (yacc.c):
13 *** The generated header is included
15 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
16 YYSTYPE, yyltype etc.), the generated parser now includes it, as was
17 already the case for GLR or C++ parsers.
19 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
23 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
25 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
27 ** glr.c improvements:
29 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
31 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
32 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
34 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
36 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
37 when -std is passed to GCC).
39 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
41 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
42 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
46 *** C++11 compatibility:
48 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
53 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
54 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
56 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
57 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
59 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
61 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
62 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
63 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
65 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
67 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
68 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
70 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
74 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
75 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
76 documentation were fixed.
78 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
80 ** Changes in the manual:
82 *** %printer is documented
84 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
85 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
87 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
88 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
90 *** Several improvements have been made:
92 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
93 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
94 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
95 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
99 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
101 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
102 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
104 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
106 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
108 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
109 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
111 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
113 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
114 halts in the middle of its course.
116 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
118 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
120 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
121 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
122 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
123 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
124 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
128 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
129 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
132 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
133 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
136 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
137 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
139 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
141 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
142 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
144 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
145 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
146 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
148 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
149 will help to stabilize them.
151 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
153 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
154 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
155 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
156 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
157 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
158 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
159 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
160 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
161 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
163 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
164 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
165 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
166 file with these directives:
170 %define lr.type canonical-lr
172 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
173 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
174 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
177 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
180 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
182 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
183 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
184 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
185 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
186 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
187 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
188 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
189 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
190 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
191 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
194 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
195 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
196 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
197 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
200 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
201 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
202 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
203 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
204 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
205 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
206 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
207 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
210 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
211 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
213 %define parse.lac full
215 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
216 details including a few caveats.
218 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
221 ** %define improvements:
223 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
225 Each of these command-line options
228 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
231 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
233 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
235 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
237 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
238 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
239 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
240 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
242 *** Variables renamed:
244 The following %define variables
247 lr.keep_unreachable_states
252 lr.keep-unreachable-states
254 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
255 for backward compatibility.
257 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
259 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
260 within quotations marks. For example,
262 %define api.push-pull "push"
266 %define api.push-pull push
268 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
270 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
272 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
274 ** Character literals not of length one:
276 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
277 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
278 the following grammar to be the same token:
284 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
285 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
287 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
289 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
290 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
291 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
292 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
294 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
296 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
297 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
298 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
299 and "last" members, instead of
301 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
305 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
306 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
310 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
316 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
320 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
321 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
325 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
329 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
331 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
332 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
333 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
334 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
336 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
338 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
339 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
340 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
341 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
342 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
343 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
344 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
345 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
347 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
349 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
350 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
351 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
352 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
354 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
358 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
360 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
361 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
362 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
363 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
364 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
365 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
366 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
368 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
370 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
371 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
372 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
373 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
374 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
376 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
377 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
378 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
379 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
380 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
381 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
382 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
383 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
384 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
385 shifted or discarded.
387 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
388 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
389 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
390 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
392 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
393 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
394 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
395 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
396 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
397 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
398 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
399 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
400 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
401 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
402 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
403 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
406 ** Java skeleton fixes:
408 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
410 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
411 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
413 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
415 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
417 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
419 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
420 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
422 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
424 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
426 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
427 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
428 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
429 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
432 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
433 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
434 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
435 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
437 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
438 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
439 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
440 then have no effect on the conflict report.
442 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
444 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
445 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
447 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
449 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
451 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
452 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
453 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
454 suppress all warnings:
458 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
460 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
461 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
462 produced an assertion failure. For example:
466 This bug has been fixed.
468 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
470 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
471 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
473 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
476 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
478 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
481 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
482 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
483 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
484 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
486 ** Minor documentation fixes.
488 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
490 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
491 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
492 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
493 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
496 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
498 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
499 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
500 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
501 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
502 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
503 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
504 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
505 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
506 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
508 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
510 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
511 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
514 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
516 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
520 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
521 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
524 %code requires {CODE}
525 %code provides {CODE}
528 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
529 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
530 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
531 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
532 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
534 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
535 is still considered experimental.
537 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
539 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
540 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
541 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
542 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
543 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
546 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
547 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
548 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
549 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
550 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
551 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
552 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
554 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
556 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
557 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
558 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
559 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
560 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
561 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
562 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
563 be removed altogether.
565 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
566 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
567 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
568 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
569 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
570 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
571 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
572 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
573 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
574 2.4.2 is not necessary.
576 ** Internationalization.
578 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
579 message translations were not installed although supported by the
582 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
584 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
585 declarations have been fixed.
587 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
589 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
590 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
592 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
596 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
598 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
599 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
600 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
601 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
602 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
605 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
607 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
609 ** %language is an experimental feature.
611 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
612 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
613 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
614 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
617 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
619 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
622 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
624 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
629 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
633 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
634 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
638 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
639 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
640 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
641 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
642 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
644 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
645 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
647 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
649 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
650 feedback will help to stabilize it.
652 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
653 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
654 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
658 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
659 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
660 %skeleton to select it.
662 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
664 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
665 feedback will help to stabilize it.
669 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
670 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
671 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
672 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
674 ** XML Automaton Report
676 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
677 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
678 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
680 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
681 %defines. For example:
685 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
686 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
687 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
690 ** Unreachable State Removal
692 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
693 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
694 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
696 1. Removes unreachable states.
698 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
699 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
700 directives in existing grammar files.
702 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
703 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
705 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
707 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
709 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
710 for further discussion.
712 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
714 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
715 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
716 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
717 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
718 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
719 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
720 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
723 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
726 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
729 %file-prefix "parser"
733 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
735 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
736 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
737 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
738 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
741 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
742 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
743 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
744 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
746 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
747 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
748 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
749 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
751 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
752 determine whether they should become permanent features.
754 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
756 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
757 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
760 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
762 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
763 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
765 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
767 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
768 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
769 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
771 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
772 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
774 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
776 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
779 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
780 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
781 declared semantic type tags.
783 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
784 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
787 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
788 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
789 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
790 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
792 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
793 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
796 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
799 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
800 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
801 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
803 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
804 completely removed from Bison.
806 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
808 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
809 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
810 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
811 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
812 and is required by POSIX.
814 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
815 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
817 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
821 %union { char *string; }
822 %token <string> STRING1
823 %token <string> STRING2
824 %type <string> string1
825 %type <string> string2
826 %union { char character; }
827 %token <character> CHR
828 %type <character> chr
829 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
830 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
831 %destructor { } <character>
833 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
834 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
835 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
836 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
837 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
839 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
840 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
843 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
844 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
845 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
846 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
847 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
849 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
850 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
852 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
853 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
854 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
855 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
856 declared after the first %union.
858 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
859 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
860 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
861 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
862 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
863 after the token definitions.
865 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
866 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
868 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
869 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
872 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
873 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
874 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
878 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
879 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
880 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
881 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
882 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
885 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
886 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
887 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
888 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
891 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
892 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
893 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
896 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
897 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
898 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
899 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
903 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
904 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
905 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
906 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
907 * Bison-generated definitions. */
910 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
911 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
913 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
914 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
916 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
917 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
920 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
922 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
923 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
925 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
926 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
928 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
930 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
931 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
932 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
934 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
936 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
938 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
939 their contents together.
941 ** New warning: unused values
942 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
943 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
945 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
949 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
950 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
951 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
953 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
954 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
956 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
959 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
960 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
961 values are used, e.g.:
963 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
964 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
967 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
968 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
970 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
972 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
973 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
975 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
976 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
977 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
978 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
980 ** %expect, %expect-rr
981 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
984 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
985 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
986 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
988 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
990 ** %require "VERSION"
991 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
992 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
994 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
995 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
996 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
997 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
998 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1000 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1001 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1002 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1003 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1005 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1006 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1008 ** DJGPP support added.
1010 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1012 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1014 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1015 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1016 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1017 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1018 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1019 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1021 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1022 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1023 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1024 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1026 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1027 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1028 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1030 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1031 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1032 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1033 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1034 unexpected "number"'.
1036 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1038 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1040 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1041 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1042 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1043 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1044 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1046 - Error token location.
1047 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1048 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1049 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1050 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1052 - Semicolon changes:
1053 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1054 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1056 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1057 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1058 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1059 forget a closing quote.
1061 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1065 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1067 - New directive: %initial-action.
1068 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1069 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1071 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1072 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1074 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1075 This is a GNU extension.
1077 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1078 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1080 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1082 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1083 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1087 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1088 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1089 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1090 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1091 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1092 these violations will become errors again.
1094 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1095 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1097 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1099 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1101 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1102 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1104 ** syntax error processing
1106 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1107 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1110 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1111 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1114 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1116 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1117 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1119 ** POSIX conformance
1121 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1122 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1123 compatibility with Yacc.
1125 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1126 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1127 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1128 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1131 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1132 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1134 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1135 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1137 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1138 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1140 - Yacc command and library now available
1141 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1142 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1143 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1144 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1146 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1148 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1149 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1150 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1152 ** Other compatibility issues
1154 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1155 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1156 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1157 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1158 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1159 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1161 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1162 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1164 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1165 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1167 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1168 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1169 withdrawn in a future release.
1174 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1177 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1178 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1180 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1181 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1182 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1184 ** #line in output files
1185 - --no-line works properly.
1187 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1188 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1189 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1190 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1192 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1194 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1196 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1199 Fix spurious parse errors.
1202 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1203 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1206 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1207 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1211 but the converse remains an error:
1215 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1218 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1220 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1221 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1223 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1228 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1229 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1230 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1231 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1233 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1234 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1237 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1238 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1239 now creates "bar.c".
1242 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1243 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1245 ** Unknown token numbers
1246 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1250 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1251 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1252 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1253 will be mapped onto another number.
1255 ** Verbose error messages
1256 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1257 error recovery is possible.
1260 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1262 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1263 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1264 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1265 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1266 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1267 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1268 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1269 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1270 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1273 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1276 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1277 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1278 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1279 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1281 ** Explicit initial rule
1282 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1283 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1287 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1288 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1290 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1291 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1293 ** Rules never reduced
1294 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1297 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1298 On a grammar such as
1300 %token useless useful
1302 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1304 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1305 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1307 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1308 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1310 ** Default locations
1311 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1312 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1313 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1314 the computation of @$.
1316 ** Token end-of-file
1317 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1318 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1319 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1323 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1326 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1329 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1330 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1332 ** Incorrect token definitions
1335 bison used to output
1338 ** Token definitions as enums
1339 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1340 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1341 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1344 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1345 produces additional information:
1347 complete the core item sets with their closure
1348 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1349 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1351 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1352 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1353 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1356 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1357 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1365 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1367 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1370 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1371 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1372 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1374 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1375 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1376 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1377 kludge will be disabled.
1379 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1382 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1384 ** File name clashes are detected
1385 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1386 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1388 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1389 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1390 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1391 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1392 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1393 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1395 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1396 many portability hassles.
1398 ** DJGPP support added.
1400 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
1402 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1405 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1406 under some conditions.
1411 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1413 ** Fix Yacc output file names
1415 ** Portability fixes
1417 ** Italian, Dutch translations
1419 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1423 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
1424 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1425 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1426 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1427 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
1429 ** Use of alloca in parsers
1430 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1431 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1433 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1436 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1438 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1439 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1442 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1443 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1444 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1446 ** Better C++ compliance
1447 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1448 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1451 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1454 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1457 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1460 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1463 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1465 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1467 ** Swedish translation
1470 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1471 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1472 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1474 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1475 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1476 previous allocations were not freed.
1478 ** Fixed verbose output file.
1479 Some newlines were missing.
1480 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1482 ** Fixed conflict report.
1483 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1487 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1489 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1491 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1493 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1495 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1496 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1498 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1500 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1504 New, aliasing "--output-file".
1506 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1508 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
1509 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
1512 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
1515 ** Portability fixes.
1517 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1519 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1520 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1521 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1522 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1524 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
1526 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1528 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
1530 ** Russian translation added.
1532 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
1534 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
1536 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
1538 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
1540 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
1542 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
1543 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
1546 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
1547 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
1550 Automatic location tracking.
1552 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
1554 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
1558 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
1560 ** There is now a FAQ.
1562 * Changes in version 1.27:
1564 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
1565 some systems has been fixed.
1567 * Changes in version 1.26:
1569 ** Bison now uses Automake.
1571 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
1573 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
1575 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
1577 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
1579 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
1581 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
1582 not provide alloca().
1584 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
1586 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
1587 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
1589 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
1590 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
1591 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
1593 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
1594 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
1595 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
1598 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
1599 directives in the parser file.
1601 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
1602 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
1604 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
1605 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
1606 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
1607 a switch statement body.
1609 * Changes in version 1.23:
1611 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
1612 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
1613 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
1614 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
1616 Line numbers in output file corrected.
1618 * Changes in version 1.22:
1620 --help option added.
1622 * Changes in version 1.20:
1624 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
1628 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1630 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
1632 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1633 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1634 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1635 (at your option) any later version.
1637 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1638 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1639 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1640 GNU General Public License for more details.
1642 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1643 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1645 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
1646 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
1647 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
1648 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
1649 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
1650 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
1651 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
1652 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
1653 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
1654 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
1655 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
1656 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
1657 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
1658 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG
1659 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
1660 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ