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1 GNU Bison NEWS
2
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5 ** Bug fixes
6
7 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
8
9 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
10 users to the appropriate place to report them.
11
12 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
13
14 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
15 generated, are removed.
16
17 All the generated headers are self-contained.
18
19 ** Changes in the format of error messages
20
21 This used to be the format of many error reports:
22
23 foo.y:5.10-24: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
24 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
25
26 It is now:
27
28 foo.y:5.10-25: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
29 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
30
31 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
32
33 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
34 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
35 For instance the header generated from
36
37 %define api.prefix "calc"
38 %defines "lib/parse.h"
39
40 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
41
42 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
43
44 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
45 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
46 before re-throwing the exception.
47
48 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
49 appreciated.
50
51 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
52
53 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
54 warnings such as:
55
56 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
57 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
58 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
59 *++yyvsp = yylval;
60 ^
61
62 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
63
64 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
65 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
66 addressed.
67
68 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
69
70 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
71 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
72 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
73 then responsible to define her type.
74
75 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
76 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
77 them.
78
79 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
80 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
81 compatibility).
82
83 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
84 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
85 api.position.type.
86
87 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
88
89 ** Bug fixes
90
91 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
92 suite have been fixed.
93
94 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
95
96 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
97 invalid C++. This is fixed.
98
99 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
100
101 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
102
103 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
104
105 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
106
107 ** Future Changes
108
109 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
110 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
111 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
112
113 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
114
115 write:
116
117 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
118
119 ** Bug fixes
120
121 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
122
123 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
124
125 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
126
127 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
128 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
129 now does.
130
131 ** Type names in actions
132
133 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
134 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
135
136 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
137
138 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
139 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
140
141 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
142
143 ** Future Changes
144
145 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
146 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
147
148 *** K&R C parsers
149
150 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
151 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
152 compilers.
153
154 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
155
156 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
157 YYLTYPE.
158
159 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
160 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
161
162 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
163 %error-verbose.
164
165 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
166
167 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
168 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
169 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
170 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
171 it.
172
173 ** Generated Parser Headers
174
175 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
176
177 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
178 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
179
180 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
181 # define YY_FOO_H
182 ...
183 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
184
185 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
186
187 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
188 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
189
190 int bar_parse (void);
191
192 rather than
193
194 #define yyparse bar_parse
195 int yyparse (void);
196
197 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
198 single compilation unit.
199
200 *** Exported symbols in C++
201
202 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
203 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
204 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
205
206 *** YYLSP_NEEDED
207
208 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
209 longer defined.
210
211 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
212
213 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
214 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
215 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
216 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
217 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
218 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
219 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
220
221 The following examples compares both:
222
223 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
224 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
225 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
226 %% %%
227 exp: 'a'; exp: 'a';
228
229 bison generates:
230
231 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
232 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
233
234 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
235 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
236 > # if defined YYDEBUG
237 > # if YYDEBUG
238 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
239 > # else
240 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
241 > # endif
242 > # else
243 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
244 > # endif
245 # endif | # endif
246
247 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
248 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
249 # endif # endif
250
251 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
252 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
253 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
254 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
255 FOO = 258 FOO = 258
256 }; };
257 # endif # endif
258
259 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
260 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
261 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
262 { {
263 int ival; int ival;
264 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
265 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
266 #endif #endif
267
268 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
269
270 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
271
272 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
273
274 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
275
276 ** Future changes:
277
278 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
279
280 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
281
282 ** glr.c improvements:
283
284 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
285
286 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
287 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
288
289 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
290
291 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
292 when -std is passed to GCC).
293
294 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
295
296 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
297 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
298
299 ** Changes for C++:
300
301 *** C++11 compatibility:
302
303 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
304 or higher.
305
306 *** Header guards
307
308 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
309 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
310
311 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
312 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
313 ...
314 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
315
316 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
317 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
318 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
319
320 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
321
322 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
323 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
324 ...
325 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
326
327 *** C++ locations:
328
329 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
330 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
331 documentation were fixed.
332
333 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
334
335 ** Changes in the manual:
336
337 *** %printer is documented
338
339 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
340 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
341
342 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
343 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
344
345 *** Several improvements have been made:
346
347 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
348 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
349 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
350 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
351
352 ** Building bison:
353
354 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
355
356 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
357 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
358
359 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
360
361 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
362
363 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
364 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
365
366 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
367
368 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
369 halts in the middle of its course.
370
371 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
372
373 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
374
375 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
376 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
377 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
378 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
379 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
380
381 ** Named references:
382
383 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
384 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
385 actions code.
386
387 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
388 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
389 as named references:
390
391 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
392 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
393
394 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
395
396 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
397 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
398
399 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
400 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
401 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
402
403 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
404 will help to stabilize them.
405
406 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
407
408 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
409 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
410 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
411 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
412 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
413 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
414 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
415 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
416 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
417
418 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
419 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
420 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
421 file with these directives:
422
423 %define lr.type lalr
424 %define lr.type ielr
425 %define lr.type canonical-lr
426
427 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
428 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
429 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
430 manual.
431
432 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
433 stabilize them.
434
435 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
436
437 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
438 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
439 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
440 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
441 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
442 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
443 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
444 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
445 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
446 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
447 tokens.
448
449 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
450 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
451 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
452 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
453 inconsistent states.
454
455 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
456 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
457 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
458 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
459 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
460 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
461 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
462 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
463 power.
464
465 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
466 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
467
468 %define parse.lac full
469
470 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
471 details including a few caveats.
472
473 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
474 stabilize it.
475
476 ** %define improvements:
477
478 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
479
480 Each of these command-line options
481
482 -D NAME[=VALUE]
483 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
484
485 -F NAME[=VALUE]
486 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
487
488 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
489
490 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
491
492 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
493 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
494 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
495 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
496
497 *** Variables renamed:
498
499 The following %define variables
500
501 api.push_pull
502 lr.keep_unreachable_states
503
504 have been renamed to
505
506 api.push-pull
507 lr.keep-unreachable-states
508
509 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
510 for backward compatibility.
511
512 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
513
514 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
515 within quotations marks. For example,
516
517 %define api.push-pull "push"
518
519 can be rewritten as
520
521 %define api.push-pull push
522
523 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
524
525 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
526
527 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
528
529 ** Character literals not of length one:
530
531 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
532 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
533 the following grammar to be the same token:
534
535 exp: exp '++'
536 | exp '+' exp
537 ;
538
539 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
540 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
541
542 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
543
544 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
545 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
546 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
547 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
548
549 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
550
551 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
552 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
553 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
554 and "last" members, instead of
555
556 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
557 do \
558 if (N) \
559 { \
560 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
561 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
562 } \
563 else \
564 { \
565 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
566 } \
567 while (false)
568
569 use:
570
571 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
572 do \
573 if (N) \
574 { \
575 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
576 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
577 } \
578 else \
579 { \
580 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
581 } \
582 while (false)
583
584 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
585
586 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
587 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
588 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
589 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
590
591 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
592
593 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
594 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
595 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
596 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
597 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
598 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
599 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
600 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
601
602 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
603
604 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
605 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
606 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
607 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
608
609 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
610
611 instead of
612
613 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
614
615 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
616 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
617 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
618 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
619 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
620 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
621 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
622
623 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
624
625 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
626 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
627 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
628 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
629 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
630
631 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
632 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
633 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
634 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
635 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
636 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
637 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
638 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
639 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
640 shifted or discarded.
641
642 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
643 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
644 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
645 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
646
647 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
648 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
649 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
650 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
651 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
652 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
653 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
654 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
655 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
656 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
657 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
658 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
659 by default.
660
661 ** Java skeleton fixes:
662
663 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
664
665 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
666 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
667
668 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
669
670 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
671
672 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
673
674 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
675 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
676
677 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
678
679 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
680
681 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
682 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
683 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
684 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
685 example:
686
687 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
688 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
689 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
690 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
691
692 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
693 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
694 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
695 then have no effect on the conflict report.
696
697 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
698
699 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
700 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
701
702 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
703
704 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
705
706 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
707 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
708 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
709 suppress all warnings:
710
711 bison -Wnone gram.y
712
713 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
714
715 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
716 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
717 produced an assertion failure. For example:
718
719 %left END 0
720
721 This bug has been fixed.
722
723 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
724
725 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
726 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
727
728 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
729 been fixed.
730
731 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
732
733 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
734 been fixed.
735
736 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
737 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
738 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
739 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
740
741 ** Minor documentation fixes.
742
743 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
744
745 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
746 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
747 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
748 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
749 affected platforms.
750
751 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
752
753 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
754 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
755 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
756 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
757 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
758 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
759 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
760 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
761 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
762
763 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
764
765 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
766 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
767 avoided.
768
769 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
770
771 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
772
773 %{CODE%}
774
775 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
776 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
777
778 %code {CODE}
779 %code requires {CODE}
780 %code provides {CODE}
781 %code top {CODE}
782
783 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
784 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
785 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
786 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
787 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
788
789 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
790 is still considered experimental.
791
792 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
793
794 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
795 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
796 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
797 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
798 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
799 specified by POSIX.
800
801 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
802 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
803 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
804 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
805 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
806 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
807 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
808
809 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
810
811 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
812 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
813 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
814 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
815 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
816 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
817 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
818 be removed altogether.
819
820 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
821 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
822 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
823 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
824 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
825 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
826 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
827 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
828 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
829 2.4.2 is not necessary.
830
831 ** Internationalization.
832
833 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
834 message translations were not installed although supported by the
835 host system.
836
837 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
838
839 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
840 declarations have been fixed.
841
842 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
843
844 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
845 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
846
847 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
848
849 instead of
850
851 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
852
853 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
854 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
855 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
856 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
857 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
858 feature.
859
860 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
861
862 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
863
864 ** %language is an experimental feature.
865
866 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
867 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
868 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
869 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
870 in future releases.
871
872 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
873
874 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
875 fixed.
876
877 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
878
879 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
880 are now deprecated:
881
882 %define NAME "VALUE"
883
884 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
885
886 %define api.pure
887
888 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
889 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
890
891 ** Push Parsing
892
893 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
894 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
895 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
896 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
897 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
898
899 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
900 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
901
902 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
903
904 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
905 feedback will help to stabilize it.
906
907 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
908 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
909 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
910
911 ** Java
912
913 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
914 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
915 %skeleton to select it.
916
917 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
918
919 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
920 feedback will help to stabilize it.
921
922 ** %language
923
924 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
925 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
926 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
927 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
928
929 ** XML Automaton Report
930
931 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
932 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
933 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
934
935 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
936 %defines. For example:
937
938 %defines "parser.h"
939
940 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
941 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
942 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
943 instead of "unused".
944
945 ** Unreachable State Removal
946
947 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
948 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
949 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
950
951 1. Removes unreachable states.
952
953 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
954 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
955 directives in existing grammar files.
956
957 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
958 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
959
960 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
961
962 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
963
964 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
965 for further discussion.
966
967 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
968
969 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
970 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
971 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
972 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
973 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
974 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
975 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
976 code.
977
978 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
979 name.
980
981 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
982 deprecated:
983
984 %file-prefix "parser"
985 %name-prefix "c_"
986 %output "parser.c"
987
988 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
989
990 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
991 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
992 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
993 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
994 it:
995
996 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
997 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
998 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
999 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1000
1001 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1002 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1003 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1004 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1005
1006 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1007 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1008
1009 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1010
1011 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1012 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1013 about unused $2 in:
1014
1015 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1016
1017 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1018 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1019
1020 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1021
1022 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1023 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1024 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1025
1026 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1027 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1028
1029 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1030
1031 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1032 %printer's:
1033
1034 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1035 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1036 declared semantic type tags.
1037
1038 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1039 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1040 type tags.
1041
1042 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1043 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1044 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1045 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1046
1047 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1048 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1049 features.
1050
1051 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1052 details.
1053
1054 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1055 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1056 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1057
1058 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1059 completely removed from Bison.
1060
1061 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1062
1063 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1064 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1065 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1066 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1067 and is required by POSIX.
1068
1069 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1070 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1071
1072 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1073
1074 For example:
1075
1076 %union { char *string; }
1077 %token <string> STRING1
1078 %token <string> STRING2
1079 %type <string> string1
1080 %type <string> string2
1081 %union { char character; }
1082 %token <character> CHR
1083 %type <character> chr
1084 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1085 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1086 %destructor { } <character>
1087
1088 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1089 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1090 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1091 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1092 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1093
1094 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1095 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1096 future versions.]
1097
1098 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1099 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1100 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1101 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1102 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1103
1104 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1105 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1106
1107 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1108 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1109 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1110 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1111 declared after the first %union.
1112
1113 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1114 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1115 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1116 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1117 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1118 after the token definitions.
1119
1120 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1121 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1122
1123 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1124 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1125 %after-header.
1126
1127 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1128 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1129 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1130 convenient for you:
1131
1132 %before-header {
1133 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1134 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1135 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1136 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1137 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1138 }
1139 %start-header {
1140 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1141 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1142 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1143 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1144 }
1145 %union {
1146 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1147 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1148 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1149 }
1150 %end-header {
1151 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1152 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1153 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1154 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1155 * definitions. */
1156 }
1157 %after-header {
1158 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1159 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1160 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1161 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1162 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1163 }
1164
1165 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1166 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1167
1168 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1169 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1170
1171 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1172 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1173 in a future release.
1174
1175 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1176
1177 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1178 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1179
1180 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1181 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1182
1183 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1184
1185 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1186 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1187 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1188
1189 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1190
1191 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1192
1193 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1194 their contents together.
1195
1196 ** New warning: unused values
1197 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1198 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1199
1200 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1201 | exp "+" exp
1202 ;
1203
1204 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1205 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1206 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1207
1208 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1209 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1210 | exp "+" exp
1211 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1212 ;
1213
1214 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1215 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1216 values are used, e.g.:
1217
1218 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1219 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1220 ;
1221
1222 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1223 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1224
1225 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1226
1227 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1228 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1229
1230 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1231 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1232 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1233 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1234
1235 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1236 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1237 instead of warnings.
1238
1239 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1240 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1241 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1242
1243 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1244
1245 ** %require "VERSION"
1246 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1247 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1248
1249 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1250 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1251 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1252 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1253 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1254
1255 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1256 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1257 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1258 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1259
1260 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1261 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1262
1263 ** DJGPP support added.
1264 \f
1265 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1266
1267 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1268
1269 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1270 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1271 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1272 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1273 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1274 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1275
1276 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1277 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1278 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1279 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1280
1281 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1282 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1283 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1284
1285 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1286 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1287 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1288 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1289 unexpected "number"'.
1290 \f
1291 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1292
1293 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1294
1295 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1296 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1297 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1298 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1299 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1300
1301 - Error token location.
1302 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1303 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1304 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1305 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1306
1307 - Semicolon changes:
1308 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1309 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1310
1311 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1312 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1313 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1314 forget a closing quote.
1315
1316 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1317
1318 ** New features
1319
1320 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1321
1322 - New directive: %initial-action.
1323 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1324 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1325
1326 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1327 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1328
1329 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1330 This is a GNU extension.
1331
1332 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1333 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1334
1335 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1336
1337 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1338 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1339
1340 ** Bug fixes
1341
1342 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1343 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1344 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1345 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1346 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1347 these violations will become errors again.
1348
1349 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1350 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1351
1352 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1353 \f
1354 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1355
1356 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1357 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1358
1359 ** syntax error processing
1360
1361 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1362 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1363
1364 - %destructor
1365 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1366 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1367
1368 - %error-verbose
1369 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1370
1371 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1372 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1373
1374 ** POSIX conformance
1375
1376 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1377 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1378 compatibility with Yacc.
1379
1380 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1381 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1382 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1383 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1384 be consistent.
1385
1386 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1387 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1388
1389 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1390 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1391
1392 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1393 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1394
1395 - Yacc command and library now available
1396 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1397 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1398 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1399 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1400
1401 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1402
1403 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1404 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1405 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1406
1407 ** Other compatibility issues
1408
1409 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1410 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1411 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1412 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1413 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1414 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1415
1416 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1417 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1418
1419 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1420 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1421
1422 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1423 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1424 withdrawn in a future release.
1425
1426 ** GLR parser notes
1427
1428 - GLR and inline
1429 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1430 C keyword "inline".
1431
1432 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1433 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1434
1435 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1436 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1437 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1438 shortcomings:
1439
1440 - a single argument only can be added,
1441 - their types are weak (void *),
1442 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1443 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1444
1445 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1446 For instance:
1447
1448 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1449 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1450 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1451
1452 results in the following signatures:
1453
1454 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1455 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1456
1457 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1458
1459 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1460 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1461
1462 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1463 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1464 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1465
1466 ** #line in output files
1467 - --no-line works properly.
1468
1469 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1470 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1471 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1472 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1473 \f
1474 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1475
1476 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1477
1478 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1479
1480 ** GLR parsers
1481 Fix spurious parse errors.
1482
1483 ** Pure parsers
1484 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1485 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1486
1487 ** Type Clashes
1488 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1489 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1490
1491 untyped: ... typed;
1492
1493 but the converse remains an error:
1494
1495 typed: ... untyped;
1496
1497 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1498 The following code:
1499
1500 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1501
1502 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1503 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1504 \f
1505 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1506
1507 ** GLR parsing
1508 The declaration
1509 %glr-parser
1510 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1511 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1512 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1513 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1514
1515 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1516 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1517
1518 ** Output Directory
1519 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1520 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1521 now creates "bar.c".
1522
1523 ** Undefined token
1524 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1525 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1526
1527 ** Unknown token numbers
1528 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1529 no longer the case.
1530
1531 ** Error token
1532 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1533 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1534 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1535 will be mapped onto another number.
1536
1537 ** Verbose error messages
1538 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1539 error recovery is possible.
1540
1541 ** End token
1542 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1543
1544 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1545 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1546 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1547 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1548 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1549 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1550 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1551 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1552 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1553
1554 ** Traces
1555 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1556
1557 ** Larger grammars
1558 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1559 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1560 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1561 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1562
1563 ** Explicit initial rule
1564 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1565 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1566 graphs as rule 0.
1567
1568 ** Useless rules
1569 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1570 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1571
1572 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1573 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1574
1575 ** Rules never reduced
1576 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1577 reported.
1578
1579 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1580 On a grammar such as
1581
1582 %token useless useful
1583 %%
1584 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1585
1586 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1587 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1588
1589 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1590 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1591
1592 ** Default locations
1593 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1594 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1595 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1596 the computation of @$.
1597
1598 ** Token end-of-file
1599 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1600 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1601 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1602 For instance
1603 %token MYEOF 0
1604 or
1605 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1606
1607 ** Semantic parser
1608 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1609
1610 ** New translations
1611 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1612 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1613
1614 ** Incorrect token definitions
1615 When given
1616 %token 'a' "A"
1617 bison used to output
1618 #define 'a' 65
1619
1620 ** Token definitions as enums
1621 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1622 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1623 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1624
1625 ** Reports
1626 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1627 produces additional information:
1628 - itemset
1629 complete the core item sets with their closure
1630 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1631 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1632 - solved
1633 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1634 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1635 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1636
1637 ** Type clashes
1638 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1639 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1640
1641 %type <foo> bar
1642 %%
1643 bar: '0' {} '0';
1644
1645 This is fixed.
1646
1647 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1648 \f
1649 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1650
1651 ** C Skeleton
1652 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1653 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1654 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1655
1656 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1657 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1658 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1659 kludge will be disabled.
1660
1661 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1662 extended.
1663 \f
1664 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1665
1666 ** File name clashes are detected
1667 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1668 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1669
1670 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1671 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1672 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1673 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1674 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1675 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1676
1677 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1678 many portability hassles.
1679
1680 ** DJGPP support added.
1681
1682 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
1683 \f
1684 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1685
1686 ** Fix C++ issues
1687 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1688 under some conditions.
1689
1690 ** Catch invalid @n
1691 As is done with $n.
1692 \f
1693 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1694
1695 ** Fix Yacc output file names
1696
1697 ** Portability fixes
1698
1699 ** Italian, Dutch translations
1700 \f
1701 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1702
1703 ** Many Bug Fixes
1704
1705 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
1706 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1707 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1708 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1709 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
1710
1711 ** Use of alloca in parsers
1712 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1713 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1714
1715 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1716 problems as on AIX.
1717
1718 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1719
1720 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1721 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1722
1723 ** User Actions
1724 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1725 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1726 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1727
1728 ** Better C++ compliance
1729 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1730 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1731
1732 ** Reduced Grammars
1733 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1734
1735 ** 64 bit hosts
1736 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1737
1738 ** Error messages
1739 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1740
1741 ** %expect
1742 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1743 any warning.
1744
1745 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1746
1747 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1748
1749 ** Swedish translation
1750
1751 ** Parse errors
1752 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1753 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1754 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1755
1756 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1757 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1758 previous allocations were not freed.
1759
1760 ** Fixed verbose output file.
1761 Some newlines were missing.
1762 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1763
1764 ** Fixed conflict report.
1765 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1766
1767 ** %expect
1768 Was not used.
1769 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1770
1771 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1772
1773 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1774
1775 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1776
1777 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1778 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1779
1780 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1781
1782 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1783 New.
1784
1785 ** --output
1786 New, aliasing "--output-file".
1787 \f
1788 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1789
1790 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
1791 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
1792 argument.
1793
1794 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
1795 experiment.
1796
1797 ** Portability fixes.
1798 \f
1799 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1800
1801 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1802 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1803 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1804 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1805
1806 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
1807
1808 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1809
1810 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
1811
1812 ** Russian translation added.
1813
1814 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
1815
1816 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
1817
1818 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
1819
1820 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
1821
1822 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
1823
1824 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
1825 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
1826
1827 ** New directives.
1828 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
1829 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
1830
1831 ** @$
1832 Automatic location tracking.
1833 \f
1834 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
1835
1836 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
1837
1838 ** Added NLS.
1839
1840 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
1841
1842 ** There is now a FAQ.
1843 \f
1844 * Changes in version 1.27:
1845
1846 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
1847 some systems has been fixed.
1848 \f
1849 * Changes in version 1.26:
1850
1851 ** Bison now uses Automake.
1852
1853 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
1854
1855 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
1856
1857 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
1858
1859 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
1860
1861 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
1862
1863 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
1864 not provide alloca().
1865 \f
1866 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
1867
1868 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
1869 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
1870
1871 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
1872 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
1873 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
1874
1875 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
1876 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
1877 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
1878 purposes.
1879
1880 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
1881 directives in the parser file.
1882
1883 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
1884 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
1885
1886 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
1887 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
1888 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
1889 a switch statement body.
1890 \f
1891 * Changes in version 1.23:
1892
1893 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
1894 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
1895 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
1896 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
1897
1898 Line numbers in output file corrected.
1899 \f
1900 * Changes in version 1.22:
1901
1902 --help option added.
1903 \f
1904 * Changes in version 1.20:
1905
1906 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
1907
1908 -----
1909
1910 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1911
1912 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
1913
1914 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1915 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1916 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1917 (at your option) any later version.
1918
1919 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1920 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1921 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1922 GNU General Public License for more details.
1923
1924 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1925 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1926
1927 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
1928 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
1929 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
1930 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
1931 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
1932 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
1933 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
1934 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
1935 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
1936 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
1937 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
1938 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
1939 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
1940 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
1941 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
1942 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
1943 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
1944 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp calc yyo fval Wmaybe
1945 LocalWords: yyvsp pragmas noreturn java's
1946
1947 Local Variables:
1948 mode: outline
1949 fill-column: 76
1950 End: