3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 *** %define api.value.type union with %defines
9 The yacc.c and glr.c parsers were broken when %defines was used
10 together with "%define api.value.type union".
12 *** Redeclarations are reported in proper order
22 /tmp/foo.yy:2.10-11: error: %printer redeclaration for FOO
25 /tmp/foo.yy:3.10-11: previous declaration
29 Now, the "previous" declaration is always the first one.
34 Bison now installs various files in its docdir (which defaults to
35 '/usr/local/share/doc/bison'), including the three fully blown examples
36 extracted from the documentation:
39 Reverse polish calculator, a simple introductory example.
41 Multi-function Calc, a calculator with memory and functions and located
44 a calculator in C++ using variant support and token constructors.
46 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.2 (2013-12-05) [stable]
50 *** Generated source files when errors are reported
52 When warnings are issued and -Werror is set, bison would still generate
53 the source files (*.c, *.h...). As a consequence, some runs of "make"
54 could fail the first time, but not the second (as the files were generated
57 This is fixed: bison no longer generates this source files, but, of
58 course, still produces the various reports (*.output, *.xml, etc.).
60 *** %empty is used in reports
62 Empty right-hand sides are denoted by '%empty' in all the reports (text,
63 dot, XML and formats derived from it).
65 *** YYERROR and variants
67 When C++ variant support is enabled, an error triggered via YYERROR, but
68 not caught via error recovery, resulted in a double deletion.
70 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.1 (2013-11-12) [stable]
74 *** Errors in caret diagnostics
76 On some platforms, some errors could result in endless diagnostics.
78 *** Fixes of the -Werror option
80 Options such as "-Werror -Wno-error=foo" were still turning "foo"
81 diagnostics into errors instead of warnings. This is fixed.
83 Actually, for consistency with GCC, "-Wno-error=foo -Werror" now also
84 leaves "foo" diagnostics as warnings. Similarly, with "-Werror=foo
85 -Wno-error", "foo" diagnostics are now errors.
89 As demonstrated in the documentation, one can now leave spaces between
94 The yacc.1 man page is no longer installed if --disable-yacc was
97 *** Fixes in the test suite
99 Bugs and portability issues.
101 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0 (2013-07-25) [stable]
103 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
105 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
106 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
107 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
109 ** Backward incompatible changes
111 *** Obsolete features
113 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
115 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
116 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
118 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
119 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
121 Missing semicolons at the end of actions are no longer added (as announced
124 *** Use of YACC='bison -y'
126 TL;DR: With Autoconf <= 2.69, pass -Wno-yacc to (AM_)YFLAGS if you use
129 Traditional Yacc generates 'y.tab.c' whatever the name of the input file.
130 Therefore Makefiles written for Yacc expect 'y.tab.c' (and possibly
131 'y.tab.h' and 'y.outout') to be generated from 'foo.y'.
133 To this end, for ages, AC_PROG_YACC, Autoconf's macro to look for an
134 implementation of Yacc, was using Bison as 'bison -y'. While it does
135 ensure compatible output file names, it also enables warnings for
136 incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc. In other words, 'bison -y' triggers
137 warnings for Bison extensions.
139 Autoconf 2.70+ fixes this incompatibility by using YACC='bison -o y.tab.c'
140 (which also generates 'y.tab.h' and 'y.output' when needed).
141 Alternatively, disable Yacc warnings by passing '-Wno-yacc' to your Yacc
142 flags (YFLAGS, or AM_YFLAGS with Automake).
146 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
148 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
149 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
150 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
151 preprocessor expansion:
153 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
155 This is fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
156 identifiers for user-provided variables.
158 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
160 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
161 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
163 *** Warnings about useless %pure-parser/%define api.pure are restored
165 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
167 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
172 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
173 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
174 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
176 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
177 the caret information only. For instance on:
184 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
185 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
189 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
190 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
194 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
196 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
197 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
199 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
201 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
202 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
203 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
205 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
206 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
207 errors (and only those):
209 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
211 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
212 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
214 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
216 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
218 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
219 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
221 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
222 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
223 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
225 *** The display of warnings is now richer
227 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
229 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
231 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
232 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
233 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
235 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
238 bison: warnings being treated as errors
239 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
243 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
245 *** Deprecated constructs
247 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
248 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
249 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
251 *** Useless semantic types
253 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
254 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
255 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
256 types that trigger the warning:
260 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
261 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
263 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
265 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
266 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
268 *** Undefined but unused symbols
270 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
271 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
274 %destructor {} symbol2
279 *** Useless destructors or printers
281 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
282 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
283 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
284 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
286 %token <type1> token1
290 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
291 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
295 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
296 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
300 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
302 compare the previous version of bison:
305 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
306 $ bison -Werror foo.y
307 bison: warnings being treated as errors
308 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
310 with the new behavior:
313 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
314 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
315 $ bison -Werror foo.y
316 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
317 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
319 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
324 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
329 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
330 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
331 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
336 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
337 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
339 ** Incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc
341 The 'yacc' category is no longer part of '-Wall', enable it explicitly
344 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
346 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
347 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
348 or more arguments. Instead of
350 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
351 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
352 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
353 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
357 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
359 ** Types of values for %define variables
361 Bison used to make no difference between '%define foo bar' and '%define
362 foo "bar"'. The former is now called a 'keyword value', and the latter a
363 'string value'. A third kind was added: 'code values', such as '%define
366 Keyword variables are used for fixed value sets, e.g.,
370 Code variables are used for value in the target language, e.g.,
372 %define api.value.type {struct semantic_type}
374 String variables are used remaining cases, e.g. file names.
376 ** Variable api.token.prefix
378 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
379 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
380 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
382 %token FILE for ERROR
383 %define api.token.prefix {TOK_}
385 start: FILE for ERROR;
387 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
388 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
389 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
390 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
392 ** Variable api.value.type
394 This new %define variable supersedes the #define macro YYSTYPE. The use
395 of YYSTYPE is discouraged. In particular, #defining YYSTYPE *and* either
396 using %union or %defining api.value.type results in undefined behavior.
398 Either define api.value.type, or use "%union":
405 %token <ival> INT "integer"
406 %token <sval> STRING "string"
407 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <ival>
408 %destructor { free ($$); } <sval>
411 yylval.ival = 42; return INT;
412 yylval.sval = "42"; return STRING;
414 The %define variable api.value.type supports both keyword and code values.
416 The keyword value 'union' means that the user provides genuine types, not
417 union member names such as "ival" and "sval" above (WARNING: will fail if
418 -y/--yacc/%yacc is enabled).
420 %define api.value.type union
421 %token <int> INT "integer"
422 %token <char *> STRING "string"
423 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <int>
424 %destructor { free ($$); } <char *>
427 yylval.INT = 42; return INT;
428 yylval.STRING = "42"; return STRING;
430 The keyword value variant is somewhat equivalent, but for C++ special
431 provision is made to allow classes to be used (more about this below).
433 %define api.value.type variant
434 %token <int> INT "integer"
435 %token <std::string> STRING "string"
437 Code values (in braces) denote user defined types. This is where YYSTYPE
455 %define api.value.type {struct my_value}
456 %token <u.ival> INT "integer"
457 %token <u.sval> STRING "string"
458 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <u.ival>
459 %destructor { free ($$); } <u.sval>
462 yylval.u.ival = 42; return INT;
463 yylval.u.sval = "42"; return STRING;
465 ** Variable parse.error
467 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
468 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
471 ** Renamed %define variables
473 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
474 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
476 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
477 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
478 namespace -> api.namespace
479 stype -> api.value.type
481 ** Semantic predicates
483 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
485 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
486 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
487 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
488 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
489 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
492 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
494 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
495 reduce/reduce conflicts.
497 ** Tokens are numbered in their order of appearance
499 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
501 With '%token A B', A had a number less than the one of B. However,
502 precedence declarations used to generate a reversed order. This is now
503 fixed, and introducing tokens with any of %token, %left, %right,
504 %precedence, or %nonassoc yields the same result.
506 When mixing declarations of tokens with a litteral character (e.g., 'a')
507 or with an identifier (e.g., B) in a precedence declaration, Bison
508 numbered the litteral characters first. For example
512 would lead to the tokens declared in this order: 'c' 'd' A B. Again, the
513 input order is now preserved.
515 These changes were made so that one can remove useless precedence and
516 associativity declarations (i.e., map %nonassoc, %left or %right to
517 %precedence, or to %token) and get exactly the same output.
519 ** Useless precedence and associativity
521 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
523 When developing and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
524 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
525 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
526 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
527 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
528 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
529 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
531 *** Precedence warning category
533 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
534 useless precedence and associativity directives.
536 *** Useless associativity
538 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
539 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
540 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
541 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
555 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
559 *** Useless precedence
561 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
562 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
563 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
564 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
568 exp: "var" '=' "number";
572 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
576 *** Useless precedence and associativity
578 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
583 exp: "var" '=' "number";
587 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
593 With help from Joel E. Denny and Gabriel Rassoul.
595 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
596 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
597 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
598 %empty. On the following grammar:
608 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
611 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
615 ** Java skeleton improvements
617 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
618 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
619 and "%define init_throws".
620 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
622 The Java skeleton now supports push parsing.
623 Contributed by Dennis Heimbigner.
625 ** C++ skeletons improvements
627 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
629 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
630 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
631 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
633 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
635 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
637 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
639 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
640 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
641 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
642 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
643 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
644 factory invoked by the user actions).
646 *** %define api.value.type variant
648 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
649 from Théophile Ranquet.
651 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
654 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
657 %type <::std::string> item;
658 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
661 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
665 %empty { /* Generates an empty string list. */ }
666 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
670 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
671 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
674 *** %define api.token.constructor
676 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
677 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
678 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
680 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
682 parser::location_type loc = ...;
684 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
686 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
688 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
694 There are operator- and operator-= for 'location'. Negative line/column
695 increments can no longer underflow the resulting value.
697 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7.1 (2013-04-15) [stable]
701 *** Fix compiler attribute portability (yacc.c)
703 With locations enabled, __attribute__ was used unprotected.
705 *** Fix some compiler warnings (lalr1.cc)
707 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
711 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
713 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
715 ** Diagnostics are improved
717 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
719 *** Changes in the format of error messages
721 This used to be the format of many error reports:
723 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
724 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
728 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
729 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
731 *** New format for error reports: carets
733 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
735 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
738 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
744 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
745 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
747 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
748 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
750 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
751 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
753 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
754 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
757 The default behavior for now is still not to display these unless
758 explicitly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
759 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
762 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
764 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
765 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
766 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
767 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
768 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
771 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
772 "%define api.pure full".
774 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
776 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
777 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
778 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
779 then responsible to define her type.
781 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
782 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
785 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
786 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
789 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
790 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
793 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
795 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
796 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
797 before re-throwing the exception.
799 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
802 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
804 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
806 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
807 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
808 numbered and left-justified.
810 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
811 diamond shaped nodes.
813 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
814 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
816 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
818 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
819 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
823 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
824 have been fixed and extended.
826 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
827 were not properly documented.
829 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
831 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
833 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
834 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
835 reporting them to us.
839 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
840 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
843 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
845 Null characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
847 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
848 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
850 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
852 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
854 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
858 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
860 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
861 users to the appropriate place to report them.
863 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
865 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
866 generated, are removed.
868 All the generated headers are self-contained.
870 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
872 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
873 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
874 For instance the header generated from
876 %define api.prefix "calc"
877 %defines "lib/parse.h"
879 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
881 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
883 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
886 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
887 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
888 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
892 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
894 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
895 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
898 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
902 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
903 suite have been fixed.
905 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
907 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
908 invalid C++. This is fixed.
910 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
912 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
914 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
916 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
920 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
921 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
922 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
924 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
928 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
932 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
934 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
936 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
938 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
939 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
942 ** Type names in actions
944 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
945 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
947 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
949 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
950 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
952 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
956 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
957 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
961 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
962 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
965 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
967 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
970 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
971 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
973 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
976 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
978 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
979 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
980 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
981 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
984 ** Generated Parser Headers
986 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
988 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
989 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
994 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
996 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
998 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
999 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
1001 int bar_parse (void);
1005 #define yyparse bar_parse
1008 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
1009 single compilation unit.
1011 *** Exported symbols in C++
1013 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
1014 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
1015 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
1019 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
1022 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
1024 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
1025 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
1026 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
1027 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
1028 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
1029 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
1030 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
1032 The following examples compares both:
1034 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
1035 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
1036 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
1042 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
1043 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
1045 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
1046 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
1047 > # if defined YYDEBUG
1049 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
1051 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
1054 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
1058 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
1059 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
1062 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
1063 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
1064 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
1065 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
1070 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
1071 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
1072 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
1075 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
1076 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
1079 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
1081 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
1083 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
1085 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
1089 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
1091 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
1093 ** glr.c improvements:
1095 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
1097 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
1098 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
1100 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
1102 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
1103 when -std is passed to GCC).
1105 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
1107 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
1108 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
1112 *** C++11 compatibility:
1114 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
1119 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
1120 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
1122 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
1123 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
1125 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
1127 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
1128 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
1129 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
1131 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
1133 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1134 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1136 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1140 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
1141 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
1142 documentation were fixed.
1144 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
1146 ** Changes in the manual:
1148 *** %printer is documented
1150 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
1151 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
1153 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
1154 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
1156 *** Several improvements have been made:
1158 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
1159 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
1160 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
1161 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
1165 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
1167 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
1168 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
1170 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
1172 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
1174 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
1175 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
1177 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
1179 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
1180 halts in the middle of its course.
1182 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
1184 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
1186 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
1187 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
1188 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
1189 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
1190 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
1192 ** Named references:
1194 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
1195 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
1198 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
1199 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
1200 as named references:
1202 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
1203 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
1205 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
1207 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
1208 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
1210 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
1211 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
1212 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
1214 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
1215 will help to stabilize them.
1216 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
1218 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
1220 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
1221 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
1222 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
1223 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
1224 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
1225 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
1226 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
1227 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
1228 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
1230 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
1231 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
1232 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
1233 file with these directives:
1235 %define lr.type lalr
1236 %define lr.type ielr
1237 %define lr.type canonical-lr
1239 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
1240 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
1241 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
1244 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1247 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
1249 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
1251 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
1252 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
1253 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
1254 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
1255 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
1256 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
1257 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
1258 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
1259 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
1260 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
1263 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
1264 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
1265 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
1266 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
1267 inconsistent states.
1269 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
1270 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
1271 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
1272 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
1273 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
1274 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
1275 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
1276 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
1279 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
1280 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
1282 %define parse.lac full
1284 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
1285 details including a few caveats.
1287 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
1290 ** %define improvements:
1292 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
1294 Each of these command-line options
1297 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
1300 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
1302 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
1304 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
1306 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
1307 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
1308 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
1309 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
1311 *** Variables renamed:
1313 The following %define variables
1316 lr.keep_unreachable_states
1318 have been renamed to
1321 lr.keep-unreachable-states
1323 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
1324 for backward compatibility.
1326 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
1328 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
1329 within quotations marks. For example,
1331 %define api.push-pull "push"
1335 %define api.push-pull push
1337 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1339 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1341 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1343 ** Character literals not of length one:
1345 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1346 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1347 the following grammar to be the same token:
1353 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1354 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1356 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1358 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1359 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1360 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1361 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1363 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1365 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1366 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1367 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1368 and "last" members, instead of
1370 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1374 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1375 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1379 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1385 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1389 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1390 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1394 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1398 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1400 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1401 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1402 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1403 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1405 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1407 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1408 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1409 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1410 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1411 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1412 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1413 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1414 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1416 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1418 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1419 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1420 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1421 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1423 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1427 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1429 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1430 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1431 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1432 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1433 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1434 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1435 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1437 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1439 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1440 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1441 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1442 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1443 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1445 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1446 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1447 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1448 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1449 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1450 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1451 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1452 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1453 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1454 shifted or discarded.
1456 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1457 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1458 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1459 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1461 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1462 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1463 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1464 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1465 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1466 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1467 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1468 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1469 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1470 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1471 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1472 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1475 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1477 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1479 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1480 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1482 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1484 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1486 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1488 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1489 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1491 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1493 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1495 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1496 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1497 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1498 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1501 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1502 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1503 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1504 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1506 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1507 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1508 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1509 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1511 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1513 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1514 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1516 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1518 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1520 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1521 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1522 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1523 suppress all warnings:
1527 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1529 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1530 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1531 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1535 This bug has been fixed.
1537 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1539 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1540 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1542 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1545 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1547 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1550 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1551 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1552 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1553 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1555 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1557 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1559 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1560 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1561 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1562 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1565 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1567 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1568 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1569 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1570 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1571 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1572 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1573 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1574 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1575 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1577 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1579 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1580 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1583 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1585 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1589 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1590 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1593 %code requires {CODE}
1594 %code provides {CODE}
1597 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1598 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1599 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1600 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1601 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1603 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1604 is still considered experimental.
1606 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1608 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1609 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1610 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1611 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1612 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1615 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1616 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1617 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1618 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1619 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1620 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1621 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1623 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1625 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1626 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1627 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1628 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1629 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1630 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1631 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1632 be removed altogether.
1634 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1635 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1636 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1637 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1638 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1639 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1640 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1641 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1642 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1643 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1645 ** Internationalization.
1647 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1648 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1651 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1653 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1654 declarations have been fixed.
1656 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1658 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1659 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1661 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1665 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1667 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1668 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1669 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1670 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1671 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1674 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1676 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1678 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1680 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1681 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1682 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1683 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1686 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1688 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1691 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1693 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1696 %define NAME "VALUE"
1698 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1702 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1703 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1707 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1708 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1709 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1710 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1711 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1713 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1714 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1716 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1718 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1719 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1721 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1722 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1723 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1727 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1728 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1729 %skeleton to select it.
1731 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1733 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1734 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1735 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1739 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1740 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1741 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1742 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1744 ** XML Automaton Report
1746 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1747 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1748 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1749 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1751 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1752 %defines. For example:
1756 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1757 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1758 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1759 instead of "unused".
1761 ** Unreachable State Removal
1763 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1764 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1765 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1767 1. Removes unreachable states.
1769 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1770 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1771 directives in existing grammar files.
1773 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1774 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1776 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1778 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1780 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1781 for further discussion.
1783 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1785 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1786 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1787 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1788 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1789 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1790 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1791 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1794 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1797 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1800 %file-prefix "parser"
1804 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1806 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1807 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1808 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1809 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1812 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1813 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1814 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1815 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1817 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1818 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1819 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1820 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1822 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1823 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1825 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1827 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1828 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1831 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1833 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1834 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1836 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1838 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1839 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1840 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1842 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1843 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1845 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1847 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1850 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1851 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1852 declared semantic type tags.
1854 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1855 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1858 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1859 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1860 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1861 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1863 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1864 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1867 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1870 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1871 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1872 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1874 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1875 completely removed from Bison.
1877 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1879 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1880 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1881 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1882 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1883 and is required by POSIX.
1885 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1886 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1888 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1892 %union { char *string; }
1893 %token <string> STRING1
1894 %token <string> STRING2
1895 %type <string> string1
1896 %type <string> string2
1897 %union { char character; }
1898 %token <character> CHR
1899 %type <character> chr
1900 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1901 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1902 %destructor { } <character>
1904 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1905 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1906 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1907 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1908 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1910 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1911 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1914 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1915 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1916 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1917 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1918 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1920 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1921 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1923 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1924 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1925 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1926 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1927 declared after the first %union.
1929 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1930 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1931 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1932 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1933 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1934 after the token definitions.
1936 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1937 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1939 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1940 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1943 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1944 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1945 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1949 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1950 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1951 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1952 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1953 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1956 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1957 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1958 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1959 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1962 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1963 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1964 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1967 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1968 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1969 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1970 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1974 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1975 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1976 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1977 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1978 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1981 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1982 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1984 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1985 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1987 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1988 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1989 in a future release.
1991 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1993 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1994 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1996 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1997 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1999 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
2001 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
2002 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
2003 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
2005 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
2007 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
2009 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
2010 their contents together.
2012 ** New warning: unused values
2013 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
2014 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
2016 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
2020 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
2021 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
2022 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
2024 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
2025 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
2027 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
2030 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
2031 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
2032 values are used, e.g.:
2034 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
2035 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
2038 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
2039 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
2041 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
2043 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
2044 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
2046 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
2047 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
2048 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
2049 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
2051 ** %expect, %expect-rr
2052 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
2053 instead of warnings.
2055 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
2056 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
2057 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
2059 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
2061 ** %require "VERSION"
2062 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
2063 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
2065 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
2066 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
2067 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
2068 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
2069 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
2071 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
2072 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
2073 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
2074 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
2076 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
2077 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
2079 ** DJGPP support added.
2081 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
2083 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
2085 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
2086 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
2087 language is still English. For details, please see the new
2088 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
2089 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
2090 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
2092 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
2093 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
2094 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
2095 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
2097 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
2098 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
2099 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
2101 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
2102 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
2103 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
2104 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
2105 unexpected "number"'.
2107 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
2109 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
2111 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
2112 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
2113 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
2114 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
2115 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
2117 - Error token location.
2118 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
2119 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
2120 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
2121 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
2123 - Semicolon changes:
2124 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
2125 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
2127 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
2128 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
2129 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
2130 forget a closing quote.
2132 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
2136 - GLR grammars now support locations.
2138 - New directive: %initial-action.
2139 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
2140 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
2142 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
2143 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
2145 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
2146 This is a GNU extension.
2148 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
2149 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
2151 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
2153 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
2154 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
2158 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
2159 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
2160 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
2161 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
2162 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
2163 these violations will become errors again.
2165 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
2166 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
2168 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
2170 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
2172 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
2173 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
2175 ** syntax error processing
2177 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
2178 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
2181 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
2182 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
2185 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
2187 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
2188 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
2190 ** POSIX conformance
2192 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
2193 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
2194 compatibility with Yacc.
2196 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
2197 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
2198 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
2199 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
2202 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
2203 declared before use. C99 requires this.
2205 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
2206 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
2208 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
2209 output as "foo\\bar.y".
2211 - Yacc command and library now available
2212 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
2213 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
2214 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
2215 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
2217 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
2219 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
2220 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
2221 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
2223 ** Other compatibility issues
2225 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
2226 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
2227 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
2228 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
2229 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
2230 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
2232 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
2233 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
2235 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
2236 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
2238 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
2239 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
2240 withdrawn in a future release.
2245 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
2248 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
2249 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
2251 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
2252 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
2253 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
2256 - a single argument only can be added,
2257 - their types are weak (void *),
2258 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
2259 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
2261 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
2264 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
2265 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
2266 %parse-param {int *randomness}
2268 results in the following signatures:
2270 int yylex (int *nastiness);
2271 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2273 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
2275 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
2276 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2278 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
2279 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
2280 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
2282 ** #line in output files
2283 - --no-line works properly.
2285 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
2286 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
2287 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
2288 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
2290 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
2292 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
2294 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
2297 Fix spurious parse errors.
2300 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
2301 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
2304 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
2305 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
2309 but the converse remains an error:
2313 ** Values of mid-rule actions
2316 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
2318 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
2319 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
2321 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
2326 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
2327 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
2328 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
2329 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2331 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
2332 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
2335 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2336 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2337 now creates "bar.c".
2340 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2341 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2343 ** Unknown token numbers
2344 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2348 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2349 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2350 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2351 will be mapped onto another number.
2353 ** Verbose error messages
2354 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2355 error recovery is possible.
2358 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2360 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2361 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2362 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2363 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2364 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2365 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2366 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2367 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2368 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2371 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2374 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2375 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2376 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2377 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2379 ** Explicit initial rule
2380 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2381 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2385 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2386 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2388 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2389 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2391 ** Rules never reduced
2392 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2395 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
2396 On a grammar such as
2398 %token useless useful
2400 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2402 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2403 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2405 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2406 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2408 ** Default locations
2409 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2410 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2411 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2412 the computation of @$.
2414 ** Token end-of-file
2415 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2416 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2417 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2421 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2424 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2427 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2428 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2430 ** Incorrect token definitions
2433 bison used to output
2436 ** Token definitions as enums
2437 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2438 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2439 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2442 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2443 produces additional information:
2445 complete the core item sets with their closure
2446 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2447 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2449 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2450 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2451 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2454 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2455 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2463 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2465 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2468 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2469 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2470 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2472 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2473 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2474 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2475 kludge will be disabled.
2477 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2480 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2482 ** File name clashes are detected
2483 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2484 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2486 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2487 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2488 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2489 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2490 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2491 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2493 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2494 many portability hassles.
2496 ** DJGPP support added.
2498 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2500 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2503 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2504 under some conditions.
2509 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2511 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2513 ** Portability fixes
2515 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2517 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2521 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2522 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2523 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2524 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2525 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2527 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2528 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2529 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2531 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2534 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2536 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2537 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2540 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2541 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2542 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2544 ** Better C++ compliance
2545 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2546 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2549 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2552 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2555 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2558 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2561 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2563 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2565 ** Swedish translation
2568 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2569 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2570 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2572 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2573 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2574 previous allocations were not freed.
2576 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2577 Some newlines were missing.
2578 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2580 ** Fixed conflict report.
2581 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2585 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2587 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2589 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2591 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2593 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2594 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2596 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2598 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2602 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2604 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2606 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2607 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2610 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2613 ** Portability fixes.
2615 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2617 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2618 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2619 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2620 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2622 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2624 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2626 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2628 ** Russian translation added.
2630 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2632 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2634 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2636 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2638 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2640 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2641 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2644 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2645 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2648 Automatic location tracking.
2650 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2652 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2656 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2658 ** There is now a FAQ.
2660 * Changes in version 1.27:
2662 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2663 some systems has been fixed.
2665 * Changes in version 1.26:
2667 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2669 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2671 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2673 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2675 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2677 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2679 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2680 not provide alloca().
2682 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2684 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2685 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2687 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2688 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2689 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2691 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2692 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2693 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2696 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2697 directives in the parser file.
2699 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2700 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2702 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2703 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2704 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2705 a switch statement body.
2707 * Changes in version 1.23:
2709 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2710 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2711 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2712 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2714 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2716 * Changes in version 1.22:
2718 --help option added.
2720 * Changes in version 1.20:
2722 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2726 Copyright (C) 1995-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2728 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2730 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2731 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2732 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2733 (at your option) any later version.
2735 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2736 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2737 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2738 GNU General Public License for more details.
2740 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2741 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2743 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2744 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2745 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2746 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2747 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2748 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2749 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2750 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2751 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2752 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2753 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2754 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2755 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2756 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2757 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2758 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2759 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2760 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2761 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts parsers yystackp yyval yynerrs
2762 LocalWords: Théophile Ranquet Santet fno fnone stype associativity Tolmer
2763 LocalWords: Wprecedence Rassoul Wempty Paolo Bonzini parser's Michiel loc
2764 LocalWords: redeclaration sval fcaret reentrant XSLT xsl Wmaybe yyvsp Tedi
2765 LocalWords: pragmas noreturn untyped Rozenman unexpanded Wojciech Polak
2766 LocalWords: Alexandre MERCHANTABILITY yytype