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1 GNU Bison NEWS
2
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
6
7 Bison will stop adding a semicolon at the end of the actions (as announced
8 in the release 2.5):
9
10 foo.y:2.22: warning: a ';' might be needed at the end of action code
11 exp: "num" { $$ = $1 }
12 ^
13 foo.y:2.22: future versions of Bison will not add the ';'
14
15 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
16 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
17 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
18
19 ** Backward incompatible changes
20
21 *** Obsolete features
22
23 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
24
25 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
26 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
27
28 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
29 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
30
31 ** Bug fixes
32
33 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines
34
35 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
36 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
37 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
38 preprocessor expansion:
39
40 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
41
42 This is has been fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
43 identifiers for user-provided variables.
44
45 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
46
47 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
48 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
49
50 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
51
52 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
53 Santet.
54
55 *** Carets
56
57 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
58 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
59 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
60
61 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
62
63 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
64 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
65 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
66
67 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
68 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
69 errors (and only those):
70
71 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
72
73 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
74 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
75
76 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
77
78 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
79
80 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
81 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
82
83 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
84 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
85 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
86
87 *** The display of warnings is now richer
88
89 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
90
91 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
92
93 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
94 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
95 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
96
97 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
98 with failure):
99
100 bison: warnings being treated as errors
101 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
102
103 it now reports:
104
105 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
106
107 *** Deprecated constructs
108
109 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
110 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
111 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
112
113 *** Useless semantic types
114
115 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
116 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
117 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
118 types that trigger the warning:
119
120 %token <type1> term
121 %type <type2> nterm
122 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
123 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
124 %%
125 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
126
127 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
128 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
129
130 *** Undefined but unused symbols
131
132 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
133 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
134
135 %printer {} symbol1
136 %destructor {} symbol2
137 %type <type> symbol3
138 %%
139 exp: "a";
140
141 *** Useless destructors or printers
142
143 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
144 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
145 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
146 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
147
148 %token <type1> token1
149 <type2> token2
150 <type3> token3
151 <type4> token4
152 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
153 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
154
155 *** Conflicts
156
157 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
158 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
159
160 %glr-parser
161 %%
162 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
163
164 compare the previous version of bison:
165
166 $ bison foo.y
167 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
168 $ bison -Werror foo.y
169 bison: warnings being treated as errors
170 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
171
172 with the new behavior:
173
174 $ bison foo.y
175 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
176 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
177 $ bison -Werror foo.y
178 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
179 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
180
181 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
182
183 %expect 0
184 %glr-parser
185 %%
186 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
187
188 Former behavior:
189
190 $ bison bar.y
191 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
192 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
193 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
194
195 New one:
196
197 $ bison bar.y
198 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
199 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
200
201 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
202
203 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
204 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
205 or more arguments. Instead of
206
207 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
208 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
209 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
210 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
211
212 one may now declare
213
214 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
215
216 ** Java skeleton improvements
217
218 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
219
220 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
221 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
222 and "%define init_throws".
223
224 ** C++ skeletons improvements
225
226 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
227
228 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
229 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
230 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
231
232 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
233
234 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
235
236 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
237
238 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
239 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
240 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
241 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
242 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
243 factory invoked by the user actions).
244
245 ** Renamed %define variables
246
247 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
248 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
249
250 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
251 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
252 namespace -> api.namespace
253 stype -> api.value.type
254
255 ** Variable api.token.prefix
256
257 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
258 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
259 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
260
261 %token FILE for ERROR
262 %define api.token.prefix "TOK_"
263 %%
264 start: FILE for ERROR;
265
266 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
267 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
268 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
269 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
270
271 ** Variable parse.error
272
273 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
274 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
275 verbose".
276
277 ** Semantic predicates
278
279 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
280
281 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
282 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
283 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
284 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
285 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
286 expressions.
287
288 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
289
290 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
291 reduce/reduce conflicts.
292
293 ** Token numbering has changed to preserve the user-defined order
294
295 When declaring %token A B, the numbering for A is inferior to B. Up to now,
296 when declaring associativity at the same time, with %left (or %right,
297 %precedence, %nonassoc), B was inferior to A.
298
299 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
300
301 ** Bug fixes
302
303 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
304
305 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
306
307 ** Diagnostics are improved
308
309 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
310
311 *** Changes in the format of error messages
312
313 This used to be the format of many error reports:
314
315 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
316 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
317
318 It is now:
319
320 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
321 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
322
323 *** New format for error reports: carets
324
325 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
326
327 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
328 %type <sval> exp
329 ^^^^^^
330 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
331 %type <ival> exp
332 ^^^^^^
333
334 or
335
336 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
337 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
338 ^^^^
339 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
340 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
341 ^^^
342 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
343 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
344 ^^^
345 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
346 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
347 ^^^
348
349 The default behaviour for now is still not to display these unless
350 explictly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
351 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
352 -fno-caret).
353
354 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
355
356 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
357 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
358 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
359 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
360 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
361 parsers).
362
363 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
364 "%define api.pure full".
365
366 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
367
368 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
369 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
370 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
371 then responsible to define her type.
372
373 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
374 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
375 them.
376
377 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
378 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
379 compatibility).
380
381 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
382 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
383 api.position.type.
384
385 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
386
387 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
388 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
389 before re-throwing the exception.
390
391 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
392 appreciated.
393
394 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
395
396 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
397
398 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
399 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
400 numbered and left-justified.
401
402 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
403 diamond shaped nodes.
404
405 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
406 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
407
408 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
409
410 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
411 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
412
413 ** Documentation
414
415 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
416 have been fixed and extended.
417
418 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
419 were not properly documented.
420
421 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
422
423 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
424
425 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
426 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
427 reporting them to us.
428
429 ** Bug fixes
430
431 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
432 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
433 3.2.
434
435 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
436
437 Nul characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
438
439 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
440 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
441
442 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
443
444 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
445
446 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
447
448 ** Bug fixes
449
450 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
451
452 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
453 users to the appropriate place to report them.
454
455 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
456
457 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
458 generated, are removed.
459
460 All the generated headers are self-contained.
461
462 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
463
464 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
465 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
466 For instance the header generated from
467
468 %define api.prefix "calc"
469 %defines "lib/parse.h"
470
471 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
472
473 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
474
475 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
476 warnings such as:
477
478 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
479 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
480 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
481 *++yyvsp = yylval;
482 ^
483
484 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
485
486 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
487 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
488 addressed.
489
490 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
491
492 ** Bug fixes
493
494 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
495 suite have been fixed.
496
497 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
498
499 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
500 invalid C++. This is fixed.
501
502 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
503
504 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
505
506 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
507
508 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
509
510 ** Future Changes
511
512 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
513 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
514 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
515
516 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
517
518 write:
519
520 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
521
522 ** Bug fixes
523
524 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
525
526 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
527
528 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
529
530 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
531 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
532 now does.
533
534 ** Type names in actions
535
536 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
537 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
538
539 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
540
541 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
542 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
543
544 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
545
546 ** Future changes
547
548 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
549 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
550
551 *** K&R C parsers
552
553 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
554 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
555 compilers.
556
557 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
558
559 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
560 YYLTYPE.
561
562 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
563 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
564
565 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
566 %error-verbose.
567
568 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
569
570 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
571 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
572 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
573 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
574 it.
575
576 ** Generated Parser Headers
577
578 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
579
580 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
581 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
582
583 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
584 # define YY_FOO_H
585 ...
586 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
587
588 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
589
590 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
591 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
592
593 int bar_parse (void);
594
595 rather than
596
597 #define yyparse bar_parse
598 int yyparse (void);
599
600 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
601 single compilation unit.
602
603 *** Exported symbols in C++
604
605 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
606 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
607 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
608
609 *** YYLSP_NEEDED
610
611 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
612 longer defined.
613
614 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
615
616 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
617 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
618 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
619 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
620 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
621 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
622 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
623
624 The following examples compares both:
625
626 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
627 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
628 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
629 %% %%
630 exp: 'a'; exp: 'a';
631
632 bison generates:
633
634 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
635 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
636
637 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
638 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
639 > # if defined YYDEBUG
640 > # if YYDEBUG
641 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
642 > # else
643 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
644 > # endif
645 > # else
646 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
647 > # endif
648 # endif | # endif
649
650 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
651 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
652 # endif # endif
653
654 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
655 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
656 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
657 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
658 FOO = 258 FOO = 258
659 }; };
660 # endif # endif
661
662 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
663 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
664 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
665 { {
666 int ival; int ival;
667 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
668 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
669 #endif #endif
670
671 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
672
673 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
674
675 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
676
677 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
678
679 ** Future changes:
680
681 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
682
683 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
684
685 ** glr.c improvements:
686
687 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
688
689 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
690 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
691
692 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
693
694 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
695 when -std is passed to GCC).
696
697 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
698
699 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
700 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
701
702 ** Changes for C++:
703
704 *** C++11 compatibility:
705
706 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
707 or higher.
708
709 *** Header guards
710
711 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
712 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
713
714 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
715 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
716 ...
717 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
718
719 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
720 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
721 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
722
723 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
724
725 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
726 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
727 ...
728 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
729
730 *** C++ locations:
731
732 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
733 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
734 documentation were fixed.
735
736 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
737
738 ** Changes in the manual:
739
740 *** %printer is documented
741
742 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
743 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
744
745 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
746 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
747
748 *** Several improvements have been made:
749
750 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
751 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
752 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
753 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
754
755 ** Building bison:
756
757 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
758
759 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
760 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
761
762 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
763
764 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
765
766 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
767 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
768
769 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
770
771 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
772 halts in the middle of its course.
773
774 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
775
776 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
777
778 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
779 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
780 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
781 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
782 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
783
784 ** Named references:
785
786 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
787 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
788 actions code.
789
790 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
791 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
792 as named references:
793
794 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
795 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
796
797 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
798
799 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
800 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
801
802 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
803 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
804 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
805
806 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
807 will help to stabilize them.
808 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
809
810 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
811
812 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
813 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
814 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
815 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
816 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
817 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
818 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
819 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
820 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
821
822 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
823 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
824 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
825 file with these directives:
826
827 %define lr.type lalr
828 %define lr.type ielr
829 %define lr.type canonical-lr
830
831 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
832 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
833 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
834 manual.
835
836 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
837 stabilize them.
838
839 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
840
841 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
842
843 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
844 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
845 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
846 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
847 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
848 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
849 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
850 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
851 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
852 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
853 tokens.
854
855 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
856 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
857 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
858 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
859 inconsistent states.
860
861 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
862 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
863 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
864 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
865 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
866 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
867 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
868 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
869 power.
870
871 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
872 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
873
874 %define parse.lac full
875
876 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
877 details including a few caveats.
878
879 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
880 stabilize it.
881
882 ** %define improvements:
883
884 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
885
886 Each of these command-line options
887
888 -D NAME[=VALUE]
889 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
890
891 -F NAME[=VALUE]
892 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
893
894 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
895
896 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
897
898 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
899 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
900 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
901 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
902
903 *** Variables renamed:
904
905 The following %define variables
906
907 api.push_pull
908 lr.keep_unreachable_states
909
910 have been renamed to
911
912 api.push-pull
913 lr.keep-unreachable-states
914
915 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
916 for backward compatibility.
917
918 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
919
920 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
921 within quotations marks. For example,
922
923 %define api.push-pull "push"
924
925 can be rewritten as
926
927 %define api.push-pull push
928
929 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
930
931 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
932
933 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
934
935 ** Character literals not of length one:
936
937 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
938 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
939 the following grammar to be the same token:
940
941 exp: exp '++'
942 | exp '+' exp
943 ;
944
945 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
946 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
947
948 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
949
950 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
951 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
952 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
953 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
954
955 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
956
957 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
958 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
959 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
960 and "last" members, instead of
961
962 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
963 do \
964 if (N) \
965 { \
966 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
967 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
968 } \
969 else \
970 { \
971 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
972 } \
973 while (false)
974
975 use:
976
977 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
978 do \
979 if (N) \
980 { \
981 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
982 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
983 } \
984 else \
985 { \
986 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
987 } \
988 while (false)
989
990 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
991
992 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
993 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
994 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
995 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
996
997 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
998
999 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1000 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1001 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1002 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1003 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1004 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1005 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1006 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1007
1008 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1009
1010 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1011 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1012 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1013 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1014
1015 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1016
1017 instead of
1018
1019 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1020
1021 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1022 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1023 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1024 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1025 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1026 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1027 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1028
1029 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1030
1031 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1032 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1033 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1034 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1035 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1036
1037 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1038 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1039 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1040 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1041 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1042 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1043 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1044 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1045 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1046 shifted or discarded.
1047
1048 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1049 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1050 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1051 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1052
1053 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1054 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1055 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1056 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1057 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1058 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1059 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1060 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1061 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1062 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1063 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1064 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1065 by default.
1066
1067 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1068
1069 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1070
1071 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1072 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1073
1074 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1075
1076 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1077
1078 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1079
1080 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1081 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1082
1083 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1084
1085 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1086
1087 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1088 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1089 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1090 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1091 example:
1092
1093 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1094 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1095 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1096 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1097
1098 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1099 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1100 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1101 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1102
1103 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1104
1105 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1106 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1107
1108 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1109
1110 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1111
1112 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1113 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1114 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1115 suppress all warnings:
1116
1117 bison -Wnone gram.y
1118
1119 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1120
1121 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1122 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1123 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1124
1125 %left END 0
1126
1127 This bug has been fixed.
1128
1129 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1130
1131 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1132 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1133
1134 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1135 been fixed.
1136
1137 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1138
1139 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1140 been fixed.
1141
1142 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1143 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1144 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1145 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1146
1147 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1148
1149 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1150
1151 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1152 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1153 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1154 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1155 affected platforms.
1156
1157 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1158
1159 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1160 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1161 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1162 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1163 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1164 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1165 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1166 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1167 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1168
1169 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1170
1171 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1172 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1173 avoided.
1174
1175 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1176
1177 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1178
1179 %{CODE%}
1180
1181 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1182 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1183
1184 %code {CODE}
1185 %code requires {CODE}
1186 %code provides {CODE}
1187 %code top {CODE}
1188
1189 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1190 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1191 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1192 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1193 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1194
1195 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1196 is still considered experimental.
1197
1198 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1199
1200 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1201 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1202 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1203 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1204 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1205 specified by POSIX.
1206
1207 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1208 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1209 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1210 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1211 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1212 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1213 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1214
1215 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1216
1217 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1218 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1219 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1220 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1221 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1222 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1223 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1224 be removed altogether.
1225
1226 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1227 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1228 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1229 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1230 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1231 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1232 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1233 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1234 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1235 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1236
1237 ** Internationalization.
1238
1239 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1240 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1241 host system.
1242
1243 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1244
1245 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1246 declarations have been fixed.
1247
1248 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1249
1250 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1251 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1252
1253 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1254
1255 instead of
1256
1257 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1258
1259 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1260 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1261 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1262 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1263 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1264 feature.
1265
1266 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1267
1268 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1269
1270 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1271
1272 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1273 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1274 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1275 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1276 in future releases.
1277
1278 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1279
1280 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1281 fixed.
1282
1283 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1284
1285 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1286 are now deprecated:
1287
1288 %define NAME "VALUE"
1289
1290 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1291
1292 %define api.pure
1293
1294 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1295 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1296
1297 ** Push Parsing
1298
1299 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1300 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1301 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1302 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1303 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1304
1305 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1306 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1307
1308 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1309
1310 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1311 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1312
1313 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1314 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1315 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1316
1317 ** Java
1318
1319 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1320 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1321 %skeleton to select it.
1322
1323 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1324
1325 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1326 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1327 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1328
1329 ** %language
1330
1331 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1332 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1333 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1334 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1335
1336 ** XML Automaton Report
1337
1338 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1339 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1340 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1341 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1342
1343 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1344 %defines. For example:
1345
1346 %defines "parser.h"
1347
1348 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1349 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1350 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1351 instead of "unused".
1352
1353 ** Unreachable State Removal
1354
1355 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1356 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1357 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1358
1359 1. Removes unreachable states.
1360
1361 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1362 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1363 directives in existing grammar files.
1364
1365 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1366 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1367
1368 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1369
1370 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1371
1372 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1373 for further discussion.
1374
1375 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1376
1377 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1378 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1379 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1380 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1381 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1382 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1383 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1384 code.
1385
1386 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1387 name.
1388
1389 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1390 deprecated:
1391
1392 %file-prefix "parser"
1393 %name-prefix "c_"
1394 %output "parser.c"
1395
1396 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1397
1398 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1399 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1400 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1401 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1402 it:
1403
1404 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1405 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1406 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1407 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1408
1409 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1410 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1411 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1412 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1413
1414 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1415 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1416
1417 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1418
1419 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1420 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1421 about unused $2 in:
1422
1423 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1424
1425 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1426 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1427
1428 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1429
1430 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1431 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1432 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1433
1434 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1435 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1436
1437 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1438
1439 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1440 %printer's:
1441
1442 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1443 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1444 declared semantic type tags.
1445
1446 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1447 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1448 type tags.
1449
1450 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1451 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1452 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1453 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1454
1455 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1456 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1457 features.
1458
1459 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1460 details.
1461
1462 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1463 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1464 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1465
1466 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1467 completely removed from Bison.
1468
1469 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1470
1471 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1472 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1473 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1474 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1475 and is required by POSIX.
1476
1477 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1478 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1479
1480 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1481
1482 For example:
1483
1484 %union { char *string; }
1485 %token <string> STRING1
1486 %token <string> STRING2
1487 %type <string> string1
1488 %type <string> string2
1489 %union { char character; }
1490 %token <character> CHR
1491 %type <character> chr
1492 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1493 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1494 %destructor { } <character>
1495
1496 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1497 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1498 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1499 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1500 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1501
1502 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1503 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1504 future versions.]
1505
1506 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1507 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1508 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1509 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1510 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1511
1512 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1513 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1514
1515 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1516 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1517 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1518 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1519 declared after the first %union.
1520
1521 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1522 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1523 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1524 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1525 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1526 after the token definitions.
1527
1528 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1529 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1530
1531 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1532 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1533 %after-header.
1534
1535 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1536 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1537 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1538 convenient for you:
1539
1540 %before-header {
1541 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1542 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1543 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1544 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1545 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1546 }
1547 %start-header {
1548 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1549 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1550 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1551 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1552 }
1553 %union {
1554 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1555 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1556 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1557 }
1558 %end-header {
1559 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1560 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1561 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1562 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1563 * definitions. */
1564 }
1565 %after-header {
1566 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1567 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1568 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1569 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1570 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1571 }
1572
1573 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1574 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1575
1576 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1577 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1578
1579 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1580 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1581 in a future release.
1582
1583 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1584
1585 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1586 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1587
1588 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1589 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1590
1591 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1592
1593 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1594 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1595 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1596
1597 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1598
1599 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1600
1601 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1602 their contents together.
1603
1604 ** New warning: unused values
1605 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1606 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1607
1608 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1609 | exp "+" exp
1610 ;
1611
1612 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1613 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1614 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1615
1616 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1617 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1618 | exp "+" exp
1619 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1620 ;
1621
1622 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1623 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1624 values are used, e.g.:
1625
1626 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1627 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1628 ;
1629
1630 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1631 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1632
1633 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1634
1635 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1636 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1637
1638 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1639 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1640 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1641 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1642
1643 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1644 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1645 instead of warnings.
1646
1647 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1648 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1649 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1650
1651 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1652
1653 ** %require "VERSION"
1654 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1655 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1656
1657 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1658 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1659 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1660 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1661 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1662
1663 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1664 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1665 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1666 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1667
1668 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1669 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1670
1671 ** DJGPP support added.
1672 \f
1673 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1674
1675 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1676
1677 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1678 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1679 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1680 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1681 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1682 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1683
1684 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1685 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1686 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1687 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1688
1689 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1690 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1691 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1692
1693 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1694 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1695 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1696 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1697 unexpected "number"'.
1698 \f
1699 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1700
1701 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1702
1703 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1704 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1705 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1706 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1707 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1708
1709 - Error token location.
1710 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1711 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1712 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1713 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1714
1715 - Semicolon changes:
1716 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1717 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1718
1719 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1720 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1721 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1722 forget a closing quote.
1723
1724 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1725
1726 ** New features
1727
1728 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1729
1730 - New directive: %initial-action.
1731 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1732 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1733
1734 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1735 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1736
1737 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1738 This is a GNU extension.
1739
1740 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1741 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1742
1743 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1744
1745 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1746 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1747
1748 ** Bug fixes
1749
1750 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1751 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1752 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1753 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1754 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1755 these violations will become errors again.
1756
1757 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1758 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1759
1760 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1761 \f
1762 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1763
1764 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1765 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1766
1767 ** syntax error processing
1768
1769 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1770 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1771
1772 - %destructor
1773 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1774 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1775
1776 - %error-verbose
1777 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1778
1779 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1780 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1781
1782 ** POSIX conformance
1783
1784 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1785 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1786 compatibility with Yacc.
1787
1788 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1789 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1790 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1791 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1792 be consistent.
1793
1794 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1795 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1796
1797 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1798 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1799
1800 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1801 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1802
1803 - Yacc command and library now available
1804 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1805 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1806 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1807 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1808
1809 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1810
1811 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1812 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1813 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1814
1815 ** Other compatibility issues
1816
1817 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1818 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1819 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1820 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1821 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1822 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1823
1824 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1825 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1826
1827 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1828 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1829
1830 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1831 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1832 withdrawn in a future release.
1833
1834 ** GLR parser notes
1835
1836 - GLR and inline
1837 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1838 C keyword "inline".
1839
1840 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1841 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1842
1843 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1844 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1845 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1846 shortcomings:
1847
1848 - a single argument only can be added,
1849 - their types are weak (void *),
1850 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1851 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1852
1853 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1854 For instance:
1855
1856 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1857 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1858 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1859
1860 results in the following signatures:
1861
1862 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1863 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1864
1865 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1866
1867 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1868 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1869
1870 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1871 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1872 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1873
1874 ** #line in output files
1875 - --no-line works properly.
1876
1877 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1878 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1879 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1880 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1881 \f
1882 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1883
1884 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1885
1886 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1887
1888 ** GLR parsers
1889 Fix spurious parse errors.
1890
1891 ** Pure parsers
1892 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1893 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1894
1895 ** Type Clashes
1896 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1897 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1898
1899 untyped: ... typed;
1900
1901 but the converse remains an error:
1902
1903 typed: ... untyped;
1904
1905 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1906 The following code:
1907
1908 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1909
1910 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1911 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1912 \f
1913 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1914
1915 ** GLR parsing
1916 The declaration
1917 %glr-parser
1918 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1919 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1920 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1921 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1922
1923 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1924 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1925
1926 ** Output Directory
1927 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1928 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1929 now creates "bar.c".
1930
1931 ** Undefined token
1932 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1933 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1934
1935 ** Unknown token numbers
1936 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1937 no longer the case.
1938
1939 ** Error token
1940 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1941 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1942 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1943 will be mapped onto another number.
1944
1945 ** Verbose error messages
1946 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1947 error recovery is possible.
1948
1949 ** End token
1950 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1951
1952 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1953 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1954 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1955 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1956 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1957 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1958 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1959 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1960 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1961
1962 ** Traces
1963 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1964
1965 ** Larger grammars
1966 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1967 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1968 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1969 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1970
1971 ** Explicit initial rule
1972 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1973 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1974 graphs as rule 0.
1975
1976 ** Useless rules
1977 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1978 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1979
1980 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1981 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1982
1983 ** Rules never reduced
1984 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1985 reported.
1986
1987 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1988 On a grammar such as
1989
1990 %token useless useful
1991 %%
1992 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1993
1994 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1995 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1996
1997 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1998 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1999
2000 ** Default locations
2001 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2002 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2003 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2004 the computation of @$.
2005
2006 ** Token end-of-file
2007 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2008 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2009 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2010 For instance
2011 %token MYEOF 0
2012 or
2013 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2014
2015 ** Semantic parser
2016 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2017
2018 ** New translations
2019 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2020 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2021
2022 ** Incorrect token definitions
2023 When given
2024 %token 'a' "A"
2025 bison used to output
2026 #define 'a' 65
2027
2028 ** Token definitions as enums
2029 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2030 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2031 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2032
2033 ** Reports
2034 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2035 produces additional information:
2036 - itemset
2037 complete the core item sets with their closure
2038 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2039 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2040 - solved
2041 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2042 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2043 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2044
2045 ** Type clashes
2046 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2047 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2048
2049 %type <foo> bar
2050 %%
2051 bar: '0' {} '0';
2052
2053 This is fixed.
2054
2055 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2056 \f
2057 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2058
2059 ** C Skeleton
2060 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2061 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2062 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2063
2064 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2065 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2066 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2067 kludge will be disabled.
2068
2069 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2070 extended.
2071 \f
2072 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2073
2074 ** File name clashes are detected
2075 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2076 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2077
2078 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2079 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2080 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2081 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2082 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2083 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2084
2085 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2086 many portability hassles.
2087
2088 ** DJGPP support added.
2089
2090 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2091 \f
2092 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2093
2094 ** Fix C++ issues
2095 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2096 under some conditions.
2097
2098 ** Catch invalid @n
2099 As is done with $n.
2100 \f
2101 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2102
2103 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2104
2105 ** Portability fixes
2106
2107 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2108 \f
2109 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2110
2111 ** Many Bug Fixes
2112
2113 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2114 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2115 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2116 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2117 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2118
2119 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2120 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2121 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2122
2123 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2124 problems as on AIX.
2125
2126 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2127
2128 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2129 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2130
2131 ** User Actions
2132 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2133 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2134 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2135
2136 ** Better C++ compliance
2137 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2138 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2139
2140 ** Reduced Grammars
2141 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2142
2143 ** 64 bit hosts
2144 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2145
2146 ** Error messages
2147 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2148
2149 ** %expect
2150 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2151 any warning.
2152
2153 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2154
2155 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2156
2157 ** Swedish translation
2158
2159 ** Parse errors
2160 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2161 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2162 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2163
2164 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2165 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2166 previous allocations were not freed.
2167
2168 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2169 Some newlines were missing.
2170 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2171
2172 ** Fixed conflict report.
2173 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2174
2175 ** %expect
2176 Was not used.
2177 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2178
2179 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2180
2181 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2182
2183 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2184
2185 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2186 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2187
2188 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2189
2190 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2191 New.
2192
2193 ** --output
2194 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2195 \f
2196 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2197
2198 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2199 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2200 argument.
2201
2202 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2203 experiment.
2204
2205 ** Portability fixes.
2206 \f
2207 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2208
2209 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2210 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2211 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2212 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2213
2214 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2215
2216 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2217
2218 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2219
2220 ** Russian translation added.
2221
2222 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2223
2224 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2225
2226 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2227
2228 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2229
2230 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2231
2232 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2233 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2234
2235 ** New directives.
2236 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2237 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2238
2239 ** @$
2240 Automatic location tracking.
2241 \f
2242 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2243
2244 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2245
2246 ** Added NLS.
2247
2248 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2249
2250 ** There is now a FAQ.
2251 \f
2252 * Changes in version 1.27:
2253
2254 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2255 some systems has been fixed.
2256 \f
2257 * Changes in version 1.26:
2258
2259 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2260
2261 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2262
2263 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2264
2265 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2266
2267 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2268
2269 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2270
2271 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2272 not provide alloca().
2273 \f
2274 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2275
2276 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2277 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2278
2279 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2280 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2281 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2282
2283 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2284 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2285 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2286 purposes.
2287
2288 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2289 directives in the parser file.
2290
2291 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2292 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2293
2294 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2295 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2296 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2297 a switch statement body.
2298 \f
2299 * Changes in version 1.23:
2300
2301 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2302 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2303 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2304 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2305
2306 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2307 \f
2308 * Changes in version 1.22:
2309
2310 --help option added.
2311 \f
2312 * Changes in version 1.20:
2313
2314 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2315
2316 -----
2317
2318 Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2319
2320 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2321
2322 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2323 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2324 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2325 (at your option) any later version.
2326
2327 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2328 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2329 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2330 GNU General Public License for more details.
2331
2332 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2333 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2334
2335 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2336 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2337 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2338 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2339 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2340 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2341 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2342 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2343 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2344 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2345 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2346 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2347 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2348 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2349 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2350 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2351 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2352 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2353 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts
2354
2355 Local Variables:
2356 mode: outline
2357 fill-column: 76
2358 End: