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