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