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