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