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1 GNU Bison NEWS
2
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5 ** Warnings
6
7 *** Warning categories are now displayed in warnings
8
9 For instance:
10
11 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
12
13 *** Useless semantic types
14
15 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
16 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
17 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
18 types that trigger the warning:
19
20 %token <type1> term
21 %type <type2> nterm
22 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
23 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
24 %%
25 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
26
27 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
28 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
29
30 *** Undeclared symbols
31
32 Bison used to raise an error for %printer and %destructor directives for
33 undefined symbols.
34
35 %printer {} symbol1
36 %destructor {} symbol2
37 %%
38 exp: "a";
39
40 This is now only a warning.
41
42 *** Useless destructors or printers
43
44 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
45 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
46 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
47 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
48
49 %token <type1> token1
50 <type2> token2
51 <type3> token3
52 <type4> token4
53 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
54 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
55
56 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
57
58 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
59 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
60 or more arguments. Instead of
61
62 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
63 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
64 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
65 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
66
67 one may now declare
68
69 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
70
71 ** Java skeleton improvements
72
73 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface.
74 Also, it is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using
75 "%code init" and "%define init_throws".
76
77 ** C++ skeleton improvements
78
79 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
80 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
81 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
82 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
83 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
84 factory invoked by the user actions).
85
86 ** Variable api.tokens.prefix
87
88 The variable api.tokens.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
89 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
90 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
91
92 %token FILE for ERROR
93 %define api.tokens.prefix "TOK_"
94 %%
95 start: FILE for ERROR;
96
97 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
98 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
99 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
100 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
101
102 ** Variable api.namespace
103
104 The "namespace" variable is renamed "api.namespace". Backward
105 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
106
107 ** Variable parse.error
108
109 The variable error controls the verbosity of error messages. The
110 use of the %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of
111 %define parse.error "verbose".
112
113 ** Semantic predicates
114
115 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of
116 the form %?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }, which cause syntax errors (as for
117 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
118 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they
119 allow the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of
120 run-time expressions.
121
122 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
123
124
125 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.90 (2012-07-05) [beta]
126
127 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
128 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
129
130 *** K&C parsers
131
132 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
133 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
134 compilers.
135
136 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
137
138 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
139 YYLTYPE.
140
141 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
142 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
143
144 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
145 %error-verbose.
146
147 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
148
149 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
150 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
151 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
152 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
153 it.
154
155 ** Generated Parser Headers
156
157 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
158
159 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
160 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
161
162 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
163 # define YY_FOO_H
164 ...
165 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
166
167 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
168
169 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
170 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
171
172 int bar_parse (void);
173
174 rather than
175
176 #define yyparse bar_parse
177 int yyparse (void);
178
179 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
180 single compilation unit.
181
182 *** Exported symbols in C++
183
184 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
185 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
186 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
187
188 *** YYLSP_NEEDED
189
190 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
191 longer defined.
192
193 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
194
195 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
196 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
197 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
198 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
199 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
200 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
201 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
202
203 The following examples compares both:
204
205 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
206 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
207 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
208 %% %%
209 exp: 'a'; exp: 'a';
210
211 bison generates:
212
213 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
214 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
215
216 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
217 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
218 > # if defined YYDEBUG
219 > # if YYDEBUG
220 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
221 > # else
222 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
223 > # endif
224 > # else
225 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
226 > # endif
227 # endif | # endif
228
229 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
230 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
231 # endif # endif
232
233 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
234 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
235 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
236 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
237 FOO = 258 FOO = 258
238 }; };
239 # endif # endif
240
241 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
242 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
243 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
244 { {
245 int ival; int ival;
246 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
247 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
248 #endif #endif
249
250 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
251
252 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
253
254 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
255
256 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
257
258 ** Future changes:
259
260 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
261
262 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
263
264 ** glr.c improvements:
265
266 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
267
268 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
269 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
270
271 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
272
273 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
274 when -std is passed to GCC).
275
276 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
277
278 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
279 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
280
281 ** Changes for C++:
282
283 *** C++11 compatibility:
284
285 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
286 or higher.
287
288 *** Header guards
289
290 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
291 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
292
293 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
294 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
295 ...
296 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
297
298 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
299 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
300 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
301
302 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
303
304 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
305 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
306 ...
307 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
308
309 *** C++ locations:
310
311 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
312 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
313 documentation were fixed.
314
315 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
316
317 ** Changes in the manual:
318
319 *** %printer is documented
320
321 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
322 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
323
324 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
325 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
326
327 *** Several improvements have been made:
328
329 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
330 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
331 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
332 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
333
334 ** Building bison:
335
336 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
337
338 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
339 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
340
341 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
342
343 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
344
345 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
346 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
347
348 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
349
350 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
351 halts in the middle of its course.
352
353 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
354
355 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
356
357 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
358 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
359 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
360 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
361 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
362
363 ** Named references:
364
365 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
366 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
367 actions code.
368
369 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
370 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
371 as named references:
372
373 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
374 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
375
376 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
377
378 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
379 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
380
381 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
382 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
383 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
384
385 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
386 will help to stabilize them.
387
388 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
389
390 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
391 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
392 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
393 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
394 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
395 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
396 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
397 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
398 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
399
400 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
401 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
402 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
403 file with these directives:
404
405 %define lr.type lalr
406 %define lr.type ielr
407 %define lr.type canonical-lr
408
409 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
410 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
411 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
412 manual.
413
414 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
415 stabilize them.
416
417 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
418
419 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
420 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
421 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
422 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
423 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
424 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
425 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
426 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
427 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
428 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
429 tokens.
430
431 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
432 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
433 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
434 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
435 inconsistent states.
436
437 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
438 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
439 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
440 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
441 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
442 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
443 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
444 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
445 power.
446
447 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
448 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
449
450 %define parse.lac full
451
452 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
453 details including a few caveats.
454
455 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
456 stabilize it.
457
458 ** %define improvements:
459
460 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
461
462 Each of these command-line options
463
464 -D NAME[=VALUE]
465 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
466
467 -F NAME[=VALUE]
468 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
469
470 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
471
472 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
473
474 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
475 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
476 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
477 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
478
479 *** Variables renamed:
480
481 The following %define variables
482
483 api.push_pull
484 lr.keep_unreachable_states
485
486 have been renamed to
487
488 api.push-pull
489 lr.keep-unreachable-states
490
491 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
492 for backward compatibility.
493
494 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
495
496 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
497 within quotations marks. For example,
498
499 %define api.push-pull "push"
500
501 can be rewritten as
502
503 %define api.push-pull push
504
505 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
506
507 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
508
509 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
510
511 ** Character literals not of length one:
512
513 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
514 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
515 the following grammar to be the same token:
516
517 exp: exp '++'
518 | exp '+' exp
519 ;
520
521 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
522 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
523
524 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
525
526 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
527 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
528 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
529 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
530
531 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
532
533 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
534 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
535 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
536 and "last" members, instead of
537
538 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
539 do \
540 if (N) \
541 { \
542 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
543 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
544 } \
545 else \
546 { \
547 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
548 } \
549 while (false)
550
551 use:
552
553 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
554 do \
555 if (N) \
556 { \
557 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
558 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
559 } \
560 else \
561 { \
562 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
563 } \
564 while (false)
565
566 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
567
568 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
569 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
570 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
571 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
572
573 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
574
575 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
576 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
577 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
578 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
579 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
580 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
581 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
582 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
583
584 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
585
586 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
587 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
588 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
589 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
590
591 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
592
593 instead of
594
595 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
596
597 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
598 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
599 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
600 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
601 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
602 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
603 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
604
605 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
606
607 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
608 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
609 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
610 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
611 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
612
613 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
614 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
615 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
616 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
617 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
618 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
619 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
620 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
621 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
622 shifted or discarded.
623
624 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
625 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
626 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
627 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
628
629 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
630 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
631 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
632 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
633 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
634 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
635 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
636 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
637 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
638 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
639 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
640 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
641 by default.
642
643 ** Java skeleton fixes:
644
645 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
646
647 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
648 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
649
650 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
651
652 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
653
654 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
655
656 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
657 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
658
659 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
660
661 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
662
663 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
664 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
665 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
666 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
667 example:
668
669 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
670 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
671 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
672 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
673
674 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
675 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
676 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
677 then have no effect on the conflict report.
678
679 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
680
681 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
682 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
683
684 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
685
686 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
687
688 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
689 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
690 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
691 suppress all warnings:
692
693 bison -Wnone gram.y
694
695 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
696
697 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
698 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
699 produced an assertion failure. For example:
700
701 %left END 0
702
703 This bug has been fixed.
704
705 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
706
707 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
708 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
709
710 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
711 been fixed.
712
713 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
714
715 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
716 been fixed.
717
718 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
719 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
720 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
721 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
722
723 ** Minor documentation fixes.
724
725 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
726
727 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
728 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
729 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
730 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
731 affected platforms.
732
733 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
734
735 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
736 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
737 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
738 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
739 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
740 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
741 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
742 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
743 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
744
745 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
746
747 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
748 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
749 avoided.
750
751 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
752
753 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
754
755 %{CODE%}
756
757 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
758 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
759
760 %code {CODE}
761 %code requires {CODE}
762 %code provides {CODE}
763 %code top {CODE}
764
765 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
766 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
767 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
768 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
769 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
770
771 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
772 is still considered experimental.
773
774 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
775
776 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
777 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
778 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
779 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
780 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
781 specified by POSIX.
782
783 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
784 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
785 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
786 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
787 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
788 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
789 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
790
791 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
792
793 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
794 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
795 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
796 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
797 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
798 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
799 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
800 be removed altogether.
801
802 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
803 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
804 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
805 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
806 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
807 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
808 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
809 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
810 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
811 2.4.2 is not necessary.
812
813 ** Internationalization.
814
815 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
816 message translations were not installed although supported by the
817 host system.
818
819 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
820
821 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
822 declarations have been fixed.
823
824 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
825
826 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
827 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
828
829 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
830
831 instead of
832
833 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
834
835 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
836 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
837 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
838 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
839 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
840 feature.
841
842 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
843
844 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
845
846 ** %language is an experimental feature.
847
848 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
849 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
850 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
851 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
852 in future releases.
853
854 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
855
856 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
857 fixed.
858
859 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
860
861 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
862 are now deprecated:
863
864 %define NAME "VALUE"
865
866 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
867
868 %define api.pure
869
870 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
871 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
872
873 ** Push Parsing
874
875 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
876 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
877 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
878 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
879 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
880
881 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
882 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
883
884 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
885
886 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
887 feedback will help to stabilize it.
888
889 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
890 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
891 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
892
893 ** Java
894
895 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
896 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
897 %skeleton to select it.
898
899 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
900
901 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
902 feedback will help to stabilize it.
903
904 ** %language
905
906 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
907 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
908 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
909 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
910
911 ** XML Automaton Report
912
913 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
914 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
915 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
916
917 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
918 %defines. For example:
919
920 %defines "parser.h"
921
922 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
923 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
924 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
925 instead of "unused".
926
927 ** Unreachable State Removal
928
929 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
930 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
931 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
932
933 1. Removes unreachable states.
934
935 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
936 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
937 directives in existing grammar files.
938
939 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
940 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
941
942 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
943
944 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
945
946 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
947 for further discussion.
948
949 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
950
951 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
952 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
953 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
954 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
955 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
956 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
957 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
958 code.
959
960 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
961 name.
962
963 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
964 deprecated:
965
966 %file-prefix "parser"
967 %name-prefix "c_"
968 %output "parser.c"
969
970 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
971
972 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
973 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
974 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
975 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
976 it:
977
978 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
979 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
980 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
981 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
982
983 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
984 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
985 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
986 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
987
988 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
989 determine whether they should become permanent features.
990
991 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
992
993 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
994 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
995 about unused $2 in:
996
997 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
998
999 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1000 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1001
1002 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1003
1004 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1005 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1006 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1007
1008 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1009 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1010
1011 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1012
1013 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1014 %printer's:
1015
1016 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1017 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1018 declared semantic type tags.
1019
1020 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1021 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1022 type tags.
1023
1024 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1025 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1026 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1027 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1028
1029 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1030 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1031 features.
1032
1033 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1034 details.
1035
1036 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1037 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1038 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1039
1040 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1041 completely removed from Bison.
1042
1043 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1044
1045 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1046 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1047 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1048 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1049 and is required by POSIX.
1050
1051 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1052 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1053
1054 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1055
1056 For example:
1057
1058 %union { char *string; }
1059 %token <string> STRING1
1060 %token <string> STRING2
1061 %type <string> string1
1062 %type <string> string2
1063 %union { char character; }
1064 %token <character> CHR
1065 %type <character> chr
1066 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1067 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1068 %destructor { } <character>
1069
1070 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1071 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1072 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1073 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1074 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1075
1076 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1077 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1078 future versions.]
1079
1080 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1081 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1082 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1083 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1084 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1085
1086 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1087 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1088
1089 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1090 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1091 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1092 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1093 declared after the first %union.
1094
1095 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1096 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1097 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1098 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1099 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1100 after the token definitions.
1101
1102 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1103 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1104
1105 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1106 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1107 %after-header.
1108
1109 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1110 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1111 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1112 convenient for you:
1113
1114 %before-header {
1115 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1116 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1117 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1118 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1119 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1120 }
1121 %start-header {
1122 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1123 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1124 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1125 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1126 }
1127 %union {
1128 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1129 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1130 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1131 }
1132 %end-header {
1133 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1134 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1135 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1136 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1137 * definitions. */
1138 }
1139 %after-header {
1140 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1141 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1142 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1143 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1144 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1145 }
1146
1147 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1148 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1149
1150 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1151 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1152
1153 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1154 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1155 in a future release.
1156
1157 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1158
1159 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1160 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1161
1162 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1163 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1164
1165 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1166
1167 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1168 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1169 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1170
1171 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1172
1173 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1174
1175 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1176 their contents together.
1177
1178 ** New warning: unused values
1179 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1180 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1181
1182 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1183 | exp "+" exp
1184 ;
1185
1186 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1187 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1188 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1189
1190 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1191 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1192 | exp "+" exp
1193 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1194 ;
1195
1196 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1197 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1198 values are used, e.g.:
1199
1200 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1201 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1202 ;
1203
1204 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1205 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1206
1207 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1208
1209 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1210 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1211
1212 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1213 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1214 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1215 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1216
1217 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1218 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1219 instead of warnings.
1220
1221 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1222 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1223 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1224
1225 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1226
1227 ** %require "VERSION"
1228 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1229 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1230
1231 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1232 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1233 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1234 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1235 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1236
1237 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1238 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1239 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1240 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1241
1242 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1243 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1244
1245 ** DJGPP support added.
1246 \f
1247 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1248
1249 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1250
1251 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1252 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1253 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1254 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1255 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1256 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1257
1258 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1259 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1260 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1261 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1262
1263 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1264 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1265 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1266
1267 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1268 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1269 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1270 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1271 unexpected "number"'.
1272 \f
1273 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1274
1275 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1276
1277 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1278 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1279 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1280 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1281 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1282
1283 - Error token location.
1284 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1285 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1286 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1287 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1288
1289 - Semicolon changes:
1290 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1291 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1292
1293 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1294 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1295 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1296 forget a closing quote.
1297
1298 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1299
1300 ** New features
1301
1302 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1303
1304 - New directive: %initial-action.
1305 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1306 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1307
1308 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1309 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1310
1311 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1312 This is a GNU extension.
1313
1314 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1315 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1316
1317 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1318
1319 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1320 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1321
1322 ** Bug fixes
1323
1324 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1325 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1326 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1327 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1328 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1329 these violations will become errors again.
1330
1331 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1332 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1333
1334 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1335 \f
1336 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1337
1338 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1339 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1340
1341 ** syntax error processing
1342
1343 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1344 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1345
1346 - %destructor
1347 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1348 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1349
1350 - %error-verbose
1351 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1352
1353 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1354 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1355
1356 ** POSIX conformance
1357
1358 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1359 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1360 compatibility with Yacc.
1361
1362 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1363 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1364 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1365 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1366 be consistent.
1367
1368 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1369 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1370
1371 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1372 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1373
1374 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1375 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1376
1377 - Yacc command and library now available
1378 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1379 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1380 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1381 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1382
1383 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1384
1385 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1386 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1387 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1388
1389 ** Other compatibility issues
1390
1391 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1392 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1393 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1394 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1395 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1396 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1397
1398 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1399 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1400
1401 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1402 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1403
1404 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1405 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1406 withdrawn in a future release.
1407
1408 ** GLR parser notes
1409
1410 - GLR and inline
1411 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1412 C keyword "inline".
1413
1414 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1415 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1416
1417 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1418 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1419 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1420 shortcomings:
1421
1422 - a single argument only can be added,
1423 - their types are weak (void *),
1424 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1425 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1426
1427 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1428 For instance:
1429
1430 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1431 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1432 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1433
1434 results in the following signatures:
1435
1436 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1437 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1438
1439 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1440
1441 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1442 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1443
1444 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1445 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1446 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1447
1448 ** #line in output files
1449 - --no-line works properly.
1450
1451 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1452 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1453 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1454 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1455 \f
1456 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1457
1458 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1459
1460 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1461
1462 ** GLR parsers
1463 Fix spurious parse errors.
1464
1465 ** Pure parsers
1466 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1467 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1468
1469 ** Type Clashes
1470 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1471 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1472
1473 untyped: ... typed;
1474
1475 but the converse remains an error:
1476
1477 typed: ... untyped;
1478
1479 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1480 The following code:
1481
1482 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1483
1484 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1485 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1486 \f
1487 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1488
1489 ** GLR parsing
1490 The declaration
1491 %glr-parser
1492 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1493 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1494 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1495 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1496
1497 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1498 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1499
1500 ** Output Directory
1501 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1502 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1503 now creates "bar.c".
1504
1505 ** Undefined token
1506 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1507 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1508
1509 ** Unknown token numbers
1510 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1511 no longer the case.
1512
1513 ** Error token
1514 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1515 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1516 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1517 will be mapped onto another number.
1518
1519 ** Verbose error messages
1520 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1521 error recovery is possible.
1522
1523 ** End token
1524 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1525
1526 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1527 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1528 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1529 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1530 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1531 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1532 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1533 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1534 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1535
1536 ** Traces
1537 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1538
1539 ** Larger grammars
1540 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1541 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1542 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1543 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1544
1545 ** Explicit initial rule
1546 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1547 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1548 graphs as rule 0.
1549
1550 ** Useless rules
1551 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1552 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1553
1554 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1555 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1556
1557 ** Rules never reduced
1558 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1559 reported.
1560
1561 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1562 On a grammar such as
1563
1564 %token useless useful
1565 %%
1566 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1567
1568 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1569 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1570
1571 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1572 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1573
1574 ** Default locations
1575 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1576 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1577 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1578 the computation of @$.
1579
1580 ** Token end-of-file
1581 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1582 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1583 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1584 For instance
1585 %token MYEOF 0
1586 or
1587 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1588
1589 ** Semantic parser
1590 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1591
1592 ** New translations
1593 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1594 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1595
1596 ** Incorrect token definitions
1597 When given
1598 %token 'a' "A"
1599 bison used to output
1600 #define 'a' 65
1601
1602 ** Token definitions as enums
1603 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1604 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1605 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1606
1607 ** Reports
1608 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1609 produces additional information:
1610 - itemset
1611 complete the core item sets with their closure
1612 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1613 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1614 - solved
1615 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1616 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1617 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1618
1619 ** Type clashes
1620 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1621 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1622
1623 %type <foo> bar
1624 %%
1625 bar: '0' {} '0';
1626
1627 This is fixed.
1628
1629 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1630 \f
1631 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1632
1633 ** C Skeleton
1634 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1635 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1636 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1637
1638 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1639 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1640 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1641 kludge will be disabled.
1642
1643 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1644 extended.
1645 \f
1646 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1647
1648 ** File name clashes are detected
1649 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1650 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1651
1652 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1653 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1654 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1655 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1656 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1657 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1658
1659 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1660 many portability hassles.
1661
1662 ** DJGPP support added.
1663
1664 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
1665 \f
1666 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1667
1668 ** Fix C++ issues
1669 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1670 under some conditions.
1671
1672 ** Catch invalid @n
1673 As is done with $n.
1674 \f
1675 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1676
1677 ** Fix Yacc output file names
1678
1679 ** Portability fixes
1680
1681 ** Italian, Dutch translations
1682 \f
1683 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1684
1685 ** Many Bug Fixes
1686
1687 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
1688 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1689 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1690 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1691 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
1692
1693 ** Use of alloca in parsers
1694 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1695 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1696
1697 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1698 problems as on AIX.
1699
1700 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1701
1702 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1703 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1704
1705 ** User Actions
1706 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1707 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1708 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1709
1710 ** Better C++ compliance
1711 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1712 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1713
1714 ** Reduced Grammars
1715 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1716
1717 ** 64 bit hosts
1718 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1719
1720 ** Error messages
1721 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1722
1723 ** %expect
1724 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1725 any warning.
1726
1727 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1728
1729 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1730
1731 ** Swedish translation
1732
1733 ** Parse errors
1734 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1735 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1736 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1737
1738 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1739 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1740 previous allocations were not freed.
1741
1742 ** Fixed verbose output file.
1743 Some newlines were missing.
1744 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1745
1746 ** Fixed conflict report.
1747 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1748
1749 ** %expect
1750 Was not used.
1751 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1752
1753 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1754
1755 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1756
1757 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1758
1759 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1760 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1761
1762 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1763
1764 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1765 New.
1766
1767 ** --output
1768 New, aliasing "--output-file".
1769 \f
1770 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1771
1772 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
1773 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
1774 argument.
1775
1776 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
1777 experiment.
1778
1779 ** Portability fixes.
1780 \f
1781 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1782
1783 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1784 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1785 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1786 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1787
1788 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
1789
1790 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1791
1792 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
1793
1794 ** Russian translation added.
1795
1796 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
1797
1798 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
1799
1800 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
1801
1802 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
1803
1804 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
1805
1806 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
1807 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
1808
1809 ** New directives.
1810 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
1811 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
1812
1813 ** @$
1814 Automatic location tracking.
1815 \f
1816 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
1817
1818 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
1819
1820 ** Added NLS.
1821
1822 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
1823
1824 ** There is now a FAQ.
1825 \f
1826 * Changes in version 1.27:
1827
1828 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
1829 some systems has been fixed.
1830 \f
1831 * Changes in version 1.26:
1832
1833 ** Bison now uses Automake.
1834
1835 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
1836
1837 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
1838
1839 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
1840
1841 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
1842
1843 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
1844
1845 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
1846 not provide alloca().
1847 \f
1848 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
1849
1850 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
1851 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
1852
1853 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
1854 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
1855 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
1856
1857 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
1858 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
1859 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
1860 purposes.
1861
1862 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
1863 directives in the parser file.
1864
1865 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
1866 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
1867
1868 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
1869 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
1870 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
1871 a switch statement body.
1872 \f
1873 * Changes in version 1.23:
1874
1875 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
1876 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
1877 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
1878 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
1879
1880 Line numbers in output file corrected.
1881 \f
1882 * Changes in version 1.22:
1883
1884 --help option added.
1885 \f
1886 * Changes in version 1.20:
1887
1888 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
1889
1890 -----
1891
1892 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1893
1894 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
1895
1896 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1897 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1898 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1899 (at your option) any later version.
1900
1901 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1902 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1903 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1904 GNU General Public License for more details.
1905
1906 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1907 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1908
1909 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
1910 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
1911 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
1912 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
1913 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
1914 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
1915 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
1916 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
1917 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
1918 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
1919 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
1920 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
1921 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
1922 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
1923 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
1924 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
1925 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
1926 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
1927 LocalWords: TOK
1928
1929 Local Variables:
1930 mode: outline
1931 fill-column: 76
1932 End: