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1 GNU Bison NEWS
2
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5 ** Warnings about undeclared symbols
6
7 Bison used to raise an error for %printer and %destructor directives for
8 undefined symbols.
9
10 %printer {} symbol1
11 %destructor {} symbol2
12 %%
13 exp: "a";
14
15 This is now only a warning.
16
17 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
18
19 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
20 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
21 or more arguments. Instead of
22
23 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
24 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
25 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
26 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
27
28 one may now declare
29
30 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
31
32 ** Java skeleton improvements
33
34 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface.
35 Also, it is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using
36 "%code init" and "%define init_throws".
37
38 ** C++ skeleton improvements
39
40 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
41 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
42 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
43 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
44 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
45 factory invoked by the user actions).
46
47 ** Variable api.tokens.prefix
48
49 The variable api.tokens.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
50 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
51 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
52
53 %token FILE for ERROR
54 %define api.tokens.prefix "TOK_"
55 %%
56 start: FILE for ERROR;
57
58 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
59 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
60 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
61 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
62
63 ** Variable api.namespace
64
65 The "namespace" variable is renamed "api.namespace". Backward
66 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
67
68 ** Variable parse.error
69
70 The variable error controls the verbosity of error messages. The
71 use of the %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of
72 %define parse.error "verbose".
73
74 ** Semantic predicates
75
76 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of
77 the form %?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }, which cause syntax errors (as for
78 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
79 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they
80 allow the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of
81 runtime expressions.
82
83 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
84
85 ** Future changes:
86
87 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C,
88 and remove the definitions of yystype and yyltype (removal announced since
89 Bison 1.875). YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, which were deprecated in
90 favor of %parse-param and %lex-param (introduced in Bison 1.875 too), will
91 no longer be supported.
92
93 ** The generated header is included (yacc.c)
94
95 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
96 YYSTYPE, yyltype etc.), the generated parser now includes it, as was
97 already the case for GLR or C++ parsers.
98
99 ** Headers (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
100
101 *** Guards
102
103 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
104 parsers (lalr1.cc). For intance, with --defines=foo.h:
105
106 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
107 # define YY_FOO_H
108 ...
109 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
110
111 *** New declarations
112
113 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
114 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
115
116 int bar_parse (void);
117
118 rather than
119
120 #define yyparse bar_parse
121 int yyparse (void);
122
123 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
124 single compilation unit.
125
126 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
127
128 ** Future changes:
129
130 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
131
132 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
133
134 ** glr.c improvements:
135
136 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
137
138 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
139 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
140
141 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
142
143 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
144 when -std is passed to GCC).
145
146 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
147
148 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
149 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
150
151 ** Changes for C++:
152
153 *** C++11 compatibility:
154
155 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
156 or higher.
157
158 *** Header guards
159
160 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
161 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
162
163 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
164 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
165 ...
166 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
167
168 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
169 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
170 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
171
172 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
173
174 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
175 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
176 ...
177 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
178
179 *** C++ locations:
180
181 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
182 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
183 documentation were fixed.
184
185 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
186
187 ** Changes in the manual:
188
189 *** %printer is documented
190
191 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
192 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
193
194 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
195 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
196
197 *** Several improvements have been made:
198
199 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
200 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
201 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
202 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
203
204 ** Building bison:
205
206 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
207
208 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
209 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
210
211 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
212
213 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
214
215 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
216 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
217
218 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
219
220 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
221 halts in the middle of its course.
222
223 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
224
225 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
226
227 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
228 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
229 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
230 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
231 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
232
233 ** Named references:
234
235 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
236 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
237 actions code.
238
239 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
240 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
241 as named references:
242
243 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
244 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
245
246 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
247
248 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
249 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
250
251 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
252 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
253 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
254
255 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
256 will help to stabilize them.
257
258 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
259
260 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
261 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
262 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
263 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
264 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
265 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
266 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
267 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
268 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
269
270 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
271 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
272 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
273 file with these directives:
274
275 %define lr.type lalr
276 %define lr.type ielr
277 %define lr.type canonical-lr
278
279 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
280 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
281 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
282 manual.
283
284 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
285 stabilize them.
286
287 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
288
289 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
290 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
291 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
292 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
293 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
294 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
295 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
296 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
297 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
298 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
299 tokens.
300
301 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
302 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
303 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
304 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
305 inconsistent states.
306
307 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
308 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
309 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
310 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
311 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
312 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
313 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
314 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
315 power.
316
317 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
318 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
319
320 %define parse.lac full
321
322 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
323 details including a few caveats.
324
325 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
326 stabilize it.
327
328 ** %define improvements:
329
330 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
331
332 Each of these command-line options
333
334 -D NAME[=VALUE]
335 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
336
337 -F NAME[=VALUE]
338 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
339
340 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
341
342 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
343
344 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
345 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
346 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
347 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
348
349 *** Variables renamed:
350
351 The following %define variables
352
353 api.push_pull
354 lr.keep_unreachable_states
355
356 have been renamed to
357
358 api.push-pull
359 lr.keep-unreachable-states
360
361 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
362 for backward compatibility.
363
364 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
365
366 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
367 within quotations marks. For example,
368
369 %define api.push-pull "push"
370
371 can be rewritten as
372
373 %define api.push-pull push
374
375 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
376
377 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
378
379 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
380
381 ** Character literals not of length one:
382
383 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
384 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
385 the following grammar to be the same token:
386
387 exp: exp '++'
388 | exp '+' exp
389 ;
390
391 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
392 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
393
394 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
395
396 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
397 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
398 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
399 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
400
401 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
402
403 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
404 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
405 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
406 and "last" members, instead of
407
408 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
409 do \
410 if (N) \
411 { \
412 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
413 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
414 } \
415 else \
416 { \
417 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
418 } \
419 while (false)
420
421 use:
422
423 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
424 do \
425 if (N) \
426 { \
427 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
428 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
429 } \
430 else \
431 { \
432 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
433 } \
434 while (false)
435
436 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
437
438 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
439 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
440 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
441 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
442
443 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
444
445 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
446 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
447 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
448 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
449 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
450 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
451 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
452 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
453
454 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
455
456 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
457 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
458 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
459 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
460
461 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
462
463 instead of
464
465 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
466
467 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
468 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
469 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
470 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
471 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
472 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
473 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
474
475 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
476
477 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
478 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
479 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
480 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
481 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
482
483 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
484 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
485 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
486 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
487 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
488 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
489 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
490 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
491 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
492 shifted or discarded.
493
494 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
495 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
496 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
497 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
498
499 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
500 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
501 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
502 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
503 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
504 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
505 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
506 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
507 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
508 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
509 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
510 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
511 by default.
512
513 ** Java skeleton fixes:
514
515 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
516
517 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
518 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
519
520 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
521
522 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
523
524 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
525
526 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
527 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
528
529 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
530
531 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
532
533 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
534 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
535 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
536 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
537 example:
538
539 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
540 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
541 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
542 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
543
544 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
545 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
546 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
547 then have no effect on the conflict report.
548
549 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
550
551 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
552 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
553
554 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
555
556 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
557
558 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
559 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
560 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
561 suppress all warnings:
562
563 bison -Wnone gram.y
564
565 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
566
567 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
568 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
569 produced an assertion failure. For example:
570
571 %left END 0
572
573 This bug has been fixed.
574
575 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
576
577 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
578 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
579
580 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
581 been fixed.
582
583 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
584
585 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
586 been fixed.
587
588 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
589 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
590 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
591 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
592
593 ** Minor documentation fixes.
594
595 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
596
597 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
598 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
599 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
600 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
601 affected platforms.
602
603 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
604
605 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
606 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
607 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
608 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
609 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
610 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
611 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
612 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
613 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
614
615 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
616
617 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
618 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
619 avoided.
620
621 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
622
623 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
624
625 %{CODE%}
626
627 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
628 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
629
630 %code {CODE}
631 %code requires {CODE}
632 %code provides {CODE}
633 %code top {CODE}
634
635 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
636 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
637 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
638 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
639 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
640
641 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
642 is still considered experimental.
643
644 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
645
646 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
647 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
648 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
649 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
650 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
651 specified by POSIX.
652
653 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
654 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
655 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
656 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
657 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
658 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
659 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
660
661 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
662
663 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
664 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
665 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
666 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
667 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
668 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
669 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
670 be removed altogether.
671
672 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
673 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
674 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
675 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
676 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
677 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
678 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
679 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
680 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
681 2.4.2 is not necessary.
682
683 ** Internationalization.
684
685 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
686 message translations were not installed although supported by the
687 host system.
688
689 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
690
691 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
692 declarations have been fixed.
693
694 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
695
696 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
697 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
698
699 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
700
701 instead of
702
703 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
704
705 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
706 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
707 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
708 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
709 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
710 feature.
711
712 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
713
714 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
715
716 ** %language is an experimental feature.
717
718 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
719 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
720 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
721 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
722 in future releases.
723
724 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
725
726 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
727 fixed.
728
729 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
730
731 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
732 are now deprecated:
733
734 %define NAME "VALUE"
735
736 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
737
738 %define api.pure
739
740 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
741 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
742
743 ** Push Parsing
744
745 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
746 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
747 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
748 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
749 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
750
751 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
752 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
753
754 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
755
756 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
757 feedback will help to stabilize it.
758
759 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
760 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
761 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
762
763 ** Java
764
765 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
766 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
767 %skeleton to select it.
768
769 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
770
771 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
772 feedback will help to stabilize it.
773
774 ** %language
775
776 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
777 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
778 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
779 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
780
781 ** XML Automaton Report
782
783 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
784 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
785 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
786
787 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
788 %defines. For example:
789
790 %defines "parser.h"
791
792 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
793 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
794 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
795 instead of "unused".
796
797 ** Unreachable State Removal
798
799 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
800 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
801 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
802
803 1. Removes unreachable states.
804
805 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
806 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
807 directives in existing grammar files.
808
809 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
810 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
811
812 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
813
814 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
815
816 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
817 for further discussion.
818
819 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
820
821 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
822 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
823 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
824 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
825 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
826 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
827 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
828 code.
829
830 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
831 name.
832
833 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
834 deprecated:
835
836 %file-prefix "parser"
837 %name-prefix "c_"
838 %output "parser.c"
839
840 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
841
842 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
843 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
844 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
845 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
846 it:
847
848 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
849 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
850 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
851 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
852
853 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
854 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
855 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
856 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
857
858 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
859 determine whether they should become permanent features.
860
861 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
862
863 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
864 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
865 about unused $2 in:
866
867 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
868
869 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
870 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
871
872 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
873
874 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
875 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
876 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
877
878 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
879 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
880
881 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
882
883 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
884 %printer's:
885
886 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
887 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
888 declared semantic type tags.
889
890 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
891 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
892 type tags.
893
894 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
895 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
896 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
897 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
898
899 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
900 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
901 features.
902
903 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
904 details.
905
906 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
907 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
908 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
909
910 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
911 completely removed from Bison.
912
913 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
914
915 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
916 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
917 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
918 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
919 and is required by POSIX.
920
921 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
922 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
923
924 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
925
926 For example:
927
928 %union { char *string; }
929 %token <string> STRING1
930 %token <string> STRING2
931 %type <string> string1
932 %type <string> string2
933 %union { char character; }
934 %token <character> CHR
935 %type <character> chr
936 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
937 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
938 %destructor { } <character>
939
940 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
941 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
942 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
943 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
944 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
945
946 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
947 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
948 future versions.]
949
950 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
951 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
952 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
953 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
954 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
955
956 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
957 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
958
959 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
960 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
961 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
962 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
963 declared after the first %union.
964
965 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
966 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
967 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
968 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
969 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
970 after the token definitions.
971
972 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
973 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
974
975 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
976 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
977 %after-header.
978
979 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
980 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
981 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
982 convenient for you:
983
984 %before-header {
985 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
986 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
987 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
988 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
989 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
990 }
991 %start-header {
992 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
993 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
994 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
995 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
996 }
997 %union {
998 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
999 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1000 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1001 }
1002 %end-header {
1003 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1004 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1005 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1006 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1007 * definitions. */
1008 }
1009 %after-header {
1010 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1011 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1012 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1013 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1014 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1015 }
1016
1017 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1018 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1019
1020 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1021 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1022
1023 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1024 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1025 in a future release.
1026
1027 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1028
1029 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1030 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1031
1032 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1033 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1034
1035 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1036
1037 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1038 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1039 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1040
1041 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1042
1043 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1044
1045 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1046 their contents together.
1047
1048 ** New warning: unused values
1049 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1050 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1051
1052 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1053 | exp "+" exp
1054 ;
1055
1056 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1057 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1058 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1059
1060 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1061 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1062 | exp "+" exp
1063 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1064 ;
1065
1066 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1067 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1068 values are used, e.g.:
1069
1070 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1071 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1072 ;
1073
1074 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1075 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1076
1077 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1078
1079 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1080 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1081
1082 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1083 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1084 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1085 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1086
1087 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1088 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1089 instead of warnings.
1090
1091 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1092 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1093 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1094
1095 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1096
1097 ** %require "VERSION"
1098 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1099 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1100
1101 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1102 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1103 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1104 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1105 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1106
1107 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1108 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1109 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1110 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1111
1112 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1113 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1114
1115 ** DJGPP support added.
1116 \f
1117 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1118
1119 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1120
1121 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1122 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1123 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1124 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1125 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1126 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1127
1128 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1129 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1130 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1131 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1132
1133 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1134 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1135 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1136
1137 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1138 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1139 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1140 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1141 unexpected "number"'.
1142 \f
1143 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1144
1145 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1146
1147 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1148 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1149 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1150 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1151 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1152
1153 - Error token location.
1154 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1155 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1156 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1157 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1158
1159 - Semicolon changes:
1160 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1161 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1162
1163 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1164 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1165 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1166 forget a closing quote.
1167
1168 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1169
1170 ** New features
1171
1172 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1173
1174 - New directive: %initial-action.
1175 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1176 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1177
1178 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1179 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1180
1181 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1182 This is a GNU extension.
1183
1184 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1185 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1186
1187 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1188
1189 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1190 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1191
1192 ** Bug fixes
1193
1194 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1195 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1196 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1197 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1198 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1199 these violations will become errors again.
1200
1201 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1202 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1203
1204 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1205 \f
1206 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1207
1208 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1209 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1210
1211 ** syntax error processing
1212
1213 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1214 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1215
1216 - %destructor
1217 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1218 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1219
1220 - %error-verbose
1221 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1222
1223 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1224 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1225
1226 ** POSIX conformance
1227
1228 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1229 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1230 compatibility with Yacc.
1231
1232 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1233 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1234 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1235 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1236 be consistent.
1237
1238 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1239 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1240
1241 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1242 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1243
1244 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1245 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1246
1247 - Yacc command and library now available
1248 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1249 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1250 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1251 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1252
1253 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1254
1255 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1256 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1257 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1258
1259 ** Other compatibility issues
1260
1261 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1262 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1263 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1264 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1265 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1266 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1267
1268 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1269 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1270
1271 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1272 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1273
1274 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1275 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1276 withdrawn in a future release.
1277
1278 ** GLR parser notes
1279
1280 - GLR and inline
1281 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1282 C keyword "inline".
1283
1284 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1285 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1286
1287 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1288 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1289 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1290 shortcomings:
1291
1292 - a single argument only can be added,
1293 - their types are weak (void *),
1294 - this context is not passed to anciliary functions such as yyerror,
1295 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1296
1297 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1298 For instance:
1299
1300 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1301 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1302 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1303
1304 results in the following signatures:
1305
1306 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1307 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1308
1309 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1310
1311 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1312 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1313
1314 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1315 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1316 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1317
1318 ** #line in output files
1319 - --no-line works properly.
1320
1321 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1322 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1323 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1324 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1325 \f
1326 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1327
1328 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1329
1330 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1331
1332 ** GLR parsers
1333 Fix spurious parse errors.
1334
1335 ** Pure parsers
1336 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1337 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1338
1339 ** Type Clashes
1340 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1341 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1342
1343 untyped: ... typed;
1344
1345 but the converse remains an error:
1346
1347 typed: ... untyped;
1348
1349 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1350 The following code:
1351
1352 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1353
1354 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1355 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1356 \f
1357 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1358
1359 ** GLR parsing
1360 The declaration
1361 %glr-parser
1362 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1363 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1364 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1365 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1366
1367 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1368 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1369
1370 ** Output Directory
1371 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1372 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1373 now creates "bar.c".
1374
1375 ** Undefined token
1376 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1377 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1378
1379 ** Unknown token numbers
1380 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1381 no longer the case.
1382
1383 ** Error token
1384 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1385 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1386 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1387 will be mapped onto another number.
1388
1389 ** Verbose error messages
1390 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1391 error recovery is possible.
1392
1393 ** End token
1394 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1395
1396 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1397 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1398 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1399 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1400 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1401 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1402 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1403 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1404 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1405
1406 ** Traces
1407 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1408
1409 ** Larger grammars
1410 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1411 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1412 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1413 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1414
1415 ** Explicit initial rule
1416 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1417 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1418 graphs as rule 0.
1419
1420 ** Useless rules
1421 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1422 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1423
1424 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1425 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1426
1427 ** Rules never reduced
1428 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1429 reported.
1430
1431 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1432 On a grammar such as
1433
1434 %token useless useful
1435 %%
1436 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1437
1438 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1439 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1440
1441 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1442 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1443
1444 ** Default locations
1445 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1446 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1447 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1448 the computation of @$.
1449
1450 ** Token end-of-file
1451 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1452 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1453 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1454 For instance
1455 %token MYEOF 0
1456 or
1457 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1458
1459 ** Semantic parser
1460 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1461
1462 ** New translations
1463 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1464 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1465
1466 ** Incorrect token definitions
1467 When given
1468 %token 'a' "A"
1469 bison used to output
1470 #define 'a' 65
1471
1472 ** Token definitions as enums
1473 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1474 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1475 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1476
1477 ** Reports
1478 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1479 produces additional information:
1480 - itemset
1481 complete the core item sets with their closure
1482 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1483 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1484 - solved
1485 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1486 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1487 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1488
1489 ** Type clashes
1490 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1491 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1492
1493 %type <foo> bar
1494 %%
1495 bar: '0' {} '0';
1496
1497 This is fixed.
1498
1499 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1500 \f
1501 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1502
1503 ** C Skeleton
1504 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1505 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1506 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1507
1508 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1509 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1510 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1511 kludge will be disabled.
1512
1513 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1514 extended.
1515 \f
1516 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1517
1518 ** File name clashes are detected
1519 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1520 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1521
1522 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1523 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1524 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1525 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1526 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1527 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1528
1529 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1530 many portability hassles.
1531
1532 ** DJGPP support added.
1533
1534 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
1535 \f
1536 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1537
1538 ** Fix C++ issues
1539 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1540 under some conditions.
1541
1542 ** Catch invalid @n
1543 As is done with $n.
1544 \f
1545 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1546
1547 ** Fix Yacc output file names
1548
1549 ** Portability fixes
1550
1551 ** Italian, Dutch translations
1552 \f
1553 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1554
1555 ** Many Bug Fixes
1556
1557 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
1558 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1559 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1560 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1561 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
1562
1563 ** Use of alloca in parsers
1564 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1565 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1566
1567 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1568 problems as on AIX.
1569
1570 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1571
1572 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1573 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1574
1575 ** User Actions
1576 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1577 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1578 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1579
1580 ** Better C++ compliance
1581 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1582 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1583
1584 ** Reduced Grammars
1585 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1586
1587 ** 64 bit hosts
1588 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1589
1590 ** Error messages
1591 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1592
1593 ** %expect
1594 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1595 any warning.
1596
1597 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1598
1599 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1600
1601 ** Swedish translation
1602
1603 ** Parse errors
1604 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1605 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1606 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1607
1608 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1609 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1610 previous allocations were not freed.
1611
1612 ** Fixed verbose output file.
1613 Some newlines were missing.
1614 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1615
1616 ** Fixed conflict report.
1617 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1618
1619 ** %expect
1620 Was not used.
1621 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1622
1623 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1624
1625 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1626
1627 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1628
1629 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1630 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1631
1632 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1633
1634 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1635 New.
1636
1637 ** --output
1638 New, aliasing "--output-file".
1639 \f
1640 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1641
1642 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
1643 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
1644 argument.
1645
1646 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
1647 experiment.
1648
1649 ** Portability fixes.
1650 \f
1651 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1652
1653 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1654 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1655 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1656 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1657
1658 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
1659
1660 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1661
1662 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
1663
1664 ** Russian translation added.
1665
1666 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
1667
1668 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
1669
1670 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
1671
1672 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
1673
1674 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
1675
1676 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
1677 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
1678
1679 ** New directives.
1680 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
1681 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
1682
1683 ** @$
1684 Automatic location tracking.
1685 \f
1686 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
1687
1688 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
1689
1690 ** Added NLS.
1691
1692 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
1693
1694 ** There is now a FAQ.
1695 \f
1696 * Changes in version 1.27:
1697
1698 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
1699 some systems has been fixed.
1700 \f
1701 * Changes in version 1.26:
1702
1703 ** Bison now uses Automake.
1704
1705 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
1706
1707 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
1708
1709 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
1710
1711 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
1712
1713 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
1714
1715 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
1716 not provide alloca().
1717 \f
1718 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
1719
1720 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
1721 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
1722
1723 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
1724 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
1725 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
1726
1727 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
1728 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
1729 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
1730 purposes.
1731
1732 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
1733 directives in the parser file.
1734
1735 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
1736 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
1737
1738 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
1739 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
1740 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
1741 a switch statement body.
1742 \f
1743 * Changes in version 1.23:
1744
1745 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
1746 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
1747 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
1748 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
1749
1750 Line numbers in output file corrected.
1751 \f
1752 * Changes in version 1.22:
1753
1754 --help option added.
1755 \f
1756 * Changes in version 1.20:
1757
1758 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
1759
1760 -----
1761
1762 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1763
1764 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
1765
1766 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1767 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1768 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1769 (at your option) any later version.
1770
1771 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1772 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1773 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1774 GNU General Public License for more details.
1775
1776 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1777 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1778
1779 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
1780 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
1781 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
1782 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
1783 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
1784 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
1785 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
1786 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
1787 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
1788 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
1789 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
1790 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
1791 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
1792 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG
1793 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
1794 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ
1795
1796 Local Variables:
1797 mode: outline
1798 fill-column: 76
1799 End: