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tests: minor improvements
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1 GNU Bison NEWS
2
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5 ** Incompatible changes
6
7 *** Obsolete features
8
9 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2).
10 Support for yystype and yyltype (instead of YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE)
11 is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875).
12 Support for YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875).
13
14 ** Warnings
15
16 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
17
18 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
19 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
20 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
21
22 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
23 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
24 errors (and only those):
25
26 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
27
28 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
29 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
30
31 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
32
33 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
34
35 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
36 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
37
38 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
39 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
40 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
41
42 *** The display of warnings is now richer
43
44 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
45
46 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
47
48 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
49 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
50 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
51
52 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
53 with failure):
54
55 bison: warnings being treated as errors
56 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
57
58 it now reports:
59
60 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
61
62 *** Deprecated constructs
63
64 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
65 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
66 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
67
68 *** Useless semantic types
69
70 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
71 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
72 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
73 types that trigger the warning:
74
75 %token <type1> term
76 %type <type2> nterm
77 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
78 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
79 %%
80 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
81
82 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
83 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
84
85 *** Undefined but unused symbols
86
87 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
88 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
89
90 %printer {} symbol1
91 %destructor {} symbol2
92 %type <type> symbol3
93 %%
94 exp: "a";
95
96 *** Useless destructors or printers
97
98 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
99 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
100 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
101 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
102
103 %token <type1> token1
104 <type2> token2
105 <type3> token3
106 <type4> token4
107 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
108 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
109
110 *** Conflicts
111
112 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
113 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
114
115 %glr-parser
116 %%
117 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
118
119 compare the previous version of bison:
120
121 $ bison foo.y
122 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
123 $ bison -Werror foo.y
124 bison: warnings being treated as errors
125 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
126
127 with the new behavior:
128
129 $ bison foo.y
130 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
131 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
132 $ bison -Werror foo.y
133 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
134 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
135
136 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
137
138 %expect 0
139 %glr-parser
140 %%
141 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
142
143 Former behavior:
144
145 $ bison bar.y
146 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
147 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
148 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
149
150 New one:
151
152 $ bison bar.y
153 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
154 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
155
156 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
157
158 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
159 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
160 or more arguments. Instead of
161
162 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
163 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
164 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
165 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
166
167 one may now declare
168
169 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
170
171 ** Java skeleton improvements
172
173 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
174 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
175 and "%define init_throws".
176
177 ** C++ skeletons improvements
178
179 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
180
181 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
182 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
183 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
184
185 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
186
187 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
188
189 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
190
191 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
192 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
193 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
194 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
195 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
196 factory invoked by the user actions).
197
198 ** Variable api.token.prefix
199
200 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
201 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
202 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
203
204 %token FILE for ERROR
205 %define api.token.prefix "TOK_"
206 %%
207 start: FILE for ERROR;
208
209 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
210 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
211 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
212 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
213
214 ** Renamed %define variables
215
216 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
217 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
218
219 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
220 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
221 namespace -> api.namespace
222
223 ** Variable parse.error
224
225 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
226 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
227 verbose".
228
229 ** Semantic predicates
230
231 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
232 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
233 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
234 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
235 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
236 expressions.
237
238 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
239
240 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
241 reduce/reduce conflicts.
242
243 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
244
245 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
246
247 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
248 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser resulted
249 in an yyerror function that did not take a location as a parameter. With this
250 new value, the user may request a better pure parser, where yyerror does take
251 a location as a parameter (in location-tracking parsers).
252
253 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
254 "%define api.pure full".
255
256 ** Changes in the format of error messages
257
258 This used to be the format of many error reports:
259
260 foo.y:5.10-24: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
261 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
262
263 It is now:
264
265 foo.y:5.10-25: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
266 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
267
268 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
269
270 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
271 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
272 before re-throwing the exception.
273
274 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
275 appreciated.
276
277 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
278
279 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
280 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
281 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
282 then responsible to define her type.
283
284 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
285 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
286 them.
287
288 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
289 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
290 compatibility).
291
292 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
293 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
294 api.position.type.
295
296 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
297
298 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
299 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
300 numbered and left-justified.
301
302 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
303 diamond shaped nodes.
304
305 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
306 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
307
308 Two nodes were added to the documentation: Xml and Graphviz.
309
310 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
311
312 ** Bug fixes
313
314 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
315
316 ** Documentation
317
318 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
319 have been fixed and extended.
320
321 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
322
323 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
324 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
325 reporting them to us.
326
327 ** Bug fixes
328
329 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
330 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
331 3.2.
332
333 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
334
335 Nul characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
336
337 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
338 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
339
340 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
341
342 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
343
344 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
345
346 ** Bug fixes
347
348 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
349
350 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
351 users to the appropriate place to report them.
352
353 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
354
355 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
356 generated, are removed.
357
358 All the generated headers are self-contained.
359
360 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
361
362 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
363 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
364 For instance the header generated from
365
366 %define api.prefix "calc"
367 %defines "lib/parse.h"
368
369 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
370
371 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
372
373 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
374 warnings such as:
375
376 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
377 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
378 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
379 *++yyvsp = yylval;
380 ^
381
382 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
383
384 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
385 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
386 addressed.
387
388 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
389
390 ** Bug fixes
391
392 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
393 suite have been fixed.
394
395 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
396
397 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
398 invalid C++. This is fixed.
399
400 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
401
402 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
403
404 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
405
406 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
407
408 ** Future Changes
409
410 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
411 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
412 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
413
414 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
415
416 write:
417
418 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
419
420 ** Bug fixes
421
422 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
423
424 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
425
426 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
427
428 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
429 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
430 now does.
431
432 ** Type names in actions
433
434 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
435 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
436
437 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
438
439 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
440 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
441
442 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
443
444 ** Future changes
445
446 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
447 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
448
449 *** K&R C parsers
450
451 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
452 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
453 compilers.
454
455 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
456
457 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
458 YYLTYPE.
459
460 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
461 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
462
463 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
464 %error-verbose.
465
466 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
467
468 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
469 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
470 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
471 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
472 it.
473
474 ** Generated Parser Headers
475
476 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
477
478 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
479 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
480
481 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
482 # define YY_FOO_H
483 ...
484 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
485
486 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
487
488 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
489 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
490
491 int bar_parse (void);
492
493 rather than
494
495 #define yyparse bar_parse
496 int yyparse (void);
497
498 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
499 single compilation unit.
500
501 *** Exported symbols in C++
502
503 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
504 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
505 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
506
507 *** YYLSP_NEEDED
508
509 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
510 longer defined.
511
512 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
513
514 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
515 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
516 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
517 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
518 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
519 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
520 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
521
522 The following examples compares both:
523
524 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
525 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
526 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
527 %% %%
528 exp: 'a'; exp: 'a';
529
530 bison generates:
531
532 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
533 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
534
535 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
536 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
537 > # if defined YYDEBUG
538 > # if YYDEBUG
539 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
540 > # else
541 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
542 > # endif
543 > # else
544 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
545 > # endif
546 # endif | # endif
547
548 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
549 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
550 # endif # endif
551
552 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
553 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
554 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
555 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
556 FOO = 258 FOO = 258
557 }; };
558 # endif # endif
559
560 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
561 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
562 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
563 { {
564 int ival; int ival;
565 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
566 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
567 #endif #endif
568
569 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
570
571 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
572
573 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
574
575 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
576
577 ** Future changes:
578
579 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
580
581 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
582
583 ** glr.c improvements:
584
585 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
586
587 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
588 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
589
590 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
591
592 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
593 when -std is passed to GCC).
594
595 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
596
597 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
598 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
599
600 ** Changes for C++:
601
602 *** C++11 compatibility:
603
604 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
605 or higher.
606
607 *** Header guards
608
609 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
610 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
611
612 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
613 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
614 ...
615 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
616
617 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
618 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
619 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
620
621 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
622
623 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
624 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
625 ...
626 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
627
628 *** C++ locations:
629
630 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
631 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
632 documentation were fixed.
633
634 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
635
636 ** Changes in the manual:
637
638 *** %printer is documented
639
640 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
641 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
642
643 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
644 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
645
646 *** Several improvements have been made:
647
648 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
649 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
650 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
651 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
652
653 ** Building bison:
654
655 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
656
657 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
658 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
659
660 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
661
662 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
663
664 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
665 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
666
667 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
668
669 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
670 halts in the middle of its course.
671
672 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
673
674 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
675
676 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
677 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
678 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
679 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
680 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
681
682 ** Named references:
683
684 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
685 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
686 actions code.
687
688 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
689 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
690 as named references:
691
692 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
693 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
694
695 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
696
697 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
698 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
699
700 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
701 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
702 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
703
704 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
705 will help to stabilize them.
706
707 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
708
709 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
710 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
711 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
712 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
713 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
714 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
715 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
716 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
717 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
718
719 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
720 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
721 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
722 file with these directives:
723
724 %define lr.type lalr
725 %define lr.type ielr
726 %define lr.type canonical-lr
727
728 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
729 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
730 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
731 manual.
732
733 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
734 stabilize them.
735
736 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
737
738 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
739 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
740 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
741 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
742 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
743 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
744 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
745 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
746 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
747 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
748 tokens.
749
750 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
751 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
752 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
753 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
754 inconsistent states.
755
756 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
757 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
758 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
759 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
760 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
761 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
762 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
763 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
764 power.
765
766 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
767 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
768
769 %define parse.lac full
770
771 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
772 details including a few caveats.
773
774 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
775 stabilize it.
776
777 ** %define improvements:
778
779 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
780
781 Each of these command-line options
782
783 -D NAME[=VALUE]
784 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
785
786 -F NAME[=VALUE]
787 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
788
789 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
790
791 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
792
793 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
794 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
795 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
796 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
797
798 *** Variables renamed:
799
800 The following %define variables
801
802 api.push_pull
803 lr.keep_unreachable_states
804
805 have been renamed to
806
807 api.push-pull
808 lr.keep-unreachable-states
809
810 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
811 for backward compatibility.
812
813 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
814
815 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
816 within quotations marks. For example,
817
818 %define api.push-pull "push"
819
820 can be rewritten as
821
822 %define api.push-pull push
823
824 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
825
826 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
827
828 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
829
830 ** Character literals not of length one:
831
832 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
833 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
834 the following grammar to be the same token:
835
836 exp: exp '++'
837 | exp '+' exp
838 ;
839
840 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
841 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
842
843 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
844
845 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
846 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
847 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
848 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
849
850 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
851
852 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
853 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
854 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
855 and "last" members, instead of
856
857 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
858 do \
859 if (N) \
860 { \
861 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
862 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
863 } \
864 else \
865 { \
866 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
867 } \
868 while (false)
869
870 use:
871
872 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
873 do \
874 if (N) \
875 { \
876 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
877 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
878 } \
879 else \
880 { \
881 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
882 } \
883 while (false)
884
885 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
886
887 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
888 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
889 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
890 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
891
892 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
893
894 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
895 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
896 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
897 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
898 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
899 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
900 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
901 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
902
903 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
904
905 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
906 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
907 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
908 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
909
910 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
911
912 instead of
913
914 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
915
916 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
917 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
918 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
919 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
920 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
921 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
922 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
923
924 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
925
926 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
927 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
928 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
929 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
930 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
931
932 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
933 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
934 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
935 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
936 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
937 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
938 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
939 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
940 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
941 shifted or discarded.
942
943 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
944 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
945 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
946 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
947
948 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
949 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
950 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
951 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
952 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
953 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
954 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
955 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
956 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
957 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
958 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
959 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
960 by default.
961
962 ** Java skeleton fixes:
963
964 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
965
966 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
967 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
968
969 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
970
971 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
972
973 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
974
975 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
976 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
977
978 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
979
980 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
981
982 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
983 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
984 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
985 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
986 example:
987
988 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
989 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
990 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
991 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
992
993 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
994 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
995 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
996 then have no effect on the conflict report.
997
998 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
999
1000 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1001 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1002
1003 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1004
1005 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1006
1007 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1008 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1009 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1010 suppress all warnings:
1011
1012 bison -Wnone gram.y
1013
1014 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1015
1016 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1017 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1018 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1019
1020 %left END 0
1021
1022 This bug has been fixed.
1023
1024 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1025
1026 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1027 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1028
1029 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1030 been fixed.
1031
1032 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1033
1034 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1035 been fixed.
1036
1037 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1038 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1039 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1040 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1041
1042 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1043
1044 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1045
1046 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1047 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1048 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1049 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1050 affected platforms.
1051
1052 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1053
1054 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1055 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1056 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1057 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1058 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1059 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1060 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1061 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1062 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1063
1064 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1065
1066 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1067 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1068 avoided.
1069
1070 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1071
1072 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1073
1074 %{CODE%}
1075
1076 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1077 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1078
1079 %code {CODE}
1080 %code requires {CODE}
1081 %code provides {CODE}
1082 %code top {CODE}
1083
1084 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1085 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1086 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1087 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1088 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1089
1090 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1091 is still considered experimental.
1092
1093 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1094
1095 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1096 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1097 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1098 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1099 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1100 specified by POSIX.
1101
1102 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1103 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1104 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1105 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1106 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1107 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1108 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1109
1110 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1111
1112 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1113 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1114 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1115 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1116 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1117 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1118 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1119 be removed altogether.
1120
1121 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1122 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1123 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1124 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1125 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1126 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1127 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1128 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1129 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1130 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1131
1132 ** Internationalization.
1133
1134 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1135 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1136 host system.
1137
1138 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1139
1140 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1141 declarations have been fixed.
1142
1143 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1144
1145 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1146 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1147
1148 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1149
1150 instead of
1151
1152 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1153
1154 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1155 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1156 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1157 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1158 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1159 feature.
1160
1161 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1162
1163 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1164
1165 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1166
1167 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1168 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1169 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1170 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1171 in future releases.
1172
1173 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1174
1175 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1176 fixed.
1177
1178 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1179
1180 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1181 are now deprecated:
1182
1183 %define NAME "VALUE"
1184
1185 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1186
1187 %define api.pure
1188
1189 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1190 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1191
1192 ** Push Parsing
1193
1194 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1195 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1196 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1197 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1198 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1199
1200 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1201 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1202
1203 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1204
1205 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1206 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1207
1208 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1209 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1210 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1211
1212 ** Java
1213
1214 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1215 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1216 %skeleton to select it.
1217
1218 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1219
1220 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1221 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1222
1223 ** %language
1224
1225 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1226 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1227 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1228 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1229
1230 ** XML Automaton Report
1231
1232 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1233 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1234 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1235
1236 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1237 %defines. For example:
1238
1239 %defines "parser.h"
1240
1241 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1242 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1243 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1244 instead of "unused".
1245
1246 ** Unreachable State Removal
1247
1248 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1249 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1250 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1251
1252 1. Removes unreachable states.
1253
1254 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1255 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1256 directives in existing grammar files.
1257
1258 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1259 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1260
1261 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1262
1263 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1264
1265 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1266 for further discussion.
1267
1268 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1269
1270 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1271 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1272 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1273 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1274 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1275 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1276 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1277 code.
1278
1279 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1280 name.
1281
1282 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1283 deprecated:
1284
1285 %file-prefix "parser"
1286 %name-prefix "c_"
1287 %output "parser.c"
1288
1289 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1290
1291 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1292 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1293 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1294 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1295 it:
1296
1297 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1298 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1299 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1300 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1301
1302 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1303 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1304 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1305 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1306
1307 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1308 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1309
1310 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1311
1312 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1313 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1314 about unused $2 in:
1315
1316 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1317
1318 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1319 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1320
1321 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1322
1323 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1324 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1325 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1326
1327 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1328 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1329
1330 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1331
1332 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1333 %printer's:
1334
1335 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1336 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1337 declared semantic type tags.
1338
1339 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1340 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1341 type tags.
1342
1343 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1344 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1345 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1346 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1347
1348 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1349 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1350 features.
1351
1352 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1353 details.
1354
1355 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1356 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1357 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1358
1359 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1360 completely removed from Bison.
1361
1362 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1363
1364 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1365 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1366 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1367 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1368 and is required by POSIX.
1369
1370 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1371 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1372
1373 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1374
1375 For example:
1376
1377 %union { char *string; }
1378 %token <string> STRING1
1379 %token <string> STRING2
1380 %type <string> string1
1381 %type <string> string2
1382 %union { char character; }
1383 %token <character> CHR
1384 %type <character> chr
1385 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1386 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1387 %destructor { } <character>
1388
1389 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1390 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1391 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1392 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1393 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1394
1395 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1396 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1397 future versions.]
1398
1399 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1400 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1401 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1402 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1403 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1404
1405 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1406 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1407
1408 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1409 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1410 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1411 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1412 declared after the first %union.
1413
1414 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1415 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1416 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1417 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1418 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1419 after the token definitions.
1420
1421 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1422 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1423
1424 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1425 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1426 %after-header.
1427
1428 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1429 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1430 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1431 convenient for you:
1432
1433 %before-header {
1434 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1435 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1436 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1437 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1438 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1439 }
1440 %start-header {
1441 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1442 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1443 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1444 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1445 }
1446 %union {
1447 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1448 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1449 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1450 }
1451 %end-header {
1452 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1453 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1454 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1455 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1456 * definitions. */
1457 }
1458 %after-header {
1459 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1460 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1461 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1462 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1463 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1464 }
1465
1466 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1467 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1468
1469 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1470 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1471
1472 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1473 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1474 in a future release.
1475
1476 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1477
1478 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1479 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1480
1481 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1482 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1483
1484 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1485
1486 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1487 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1488 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1489
1490 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1491
1492 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1493
1494 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1495 their contents together.
1496
1497 ** New warning: unused values
1498 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1499 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1500
1501 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1502 | exp "+" exp
1503 ;
1504
1505 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1506 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1507 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1508
1509 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1510 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1511 | exp "+" exp
1512 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1513 ;
1514
1515 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1516 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1517 values are used, e.g.:
1518
1519 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1520 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1521 ;
1522
1523 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1524 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1525
1526 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1527
1528 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1529 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1530
1531 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1532 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1533 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1534 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1535
1536 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1537 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1538 instead of warnings.
1539
1540 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1541 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1542 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1543
1544 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1545
1546 ** %require "VERSION"
1547 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1548 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1549
1550 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1551 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1552 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1553 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1554 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1555
1556 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1557 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1558 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1559 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1560
1561 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1562 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1563
1564 ** DJGPP support added.
1565 \f
1566 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1567
1568 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1569
1570 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1571 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1572 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1573 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1574 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1575 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1576
1577 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1578 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1579 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1580 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1581
1582 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1583 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1584 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1585
1586 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1587 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1588 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1589 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1590 unexpected "number"'.
1591 \f
1592 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1593
1594 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1595
1596 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1597 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1598 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1599 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1600 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1601
1602 - Error token location.
1603 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1604 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1605 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1606 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1607
1608 - Semicolon changes:
1609 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1610 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1611
1612 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1613 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1614 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1615 forget a closing quote.
1616
1617 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1618
1619 ** New features
1620
1621 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1622
1623 - New directive: %initial-action.
1624 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1625 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1626
1627 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1628 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1629
1630 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1631 This is a GNU extension.
1632
1633 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1634 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1635
1636 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1637
1638 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1639 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1640
1641 ** Bug fixes
1642
1643 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1644 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1645 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1646 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1647 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1648 these violations will become errors again.
1649
1650 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1651 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1652
1653 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1654 \f
1655 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1656
1657 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1658 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1659
1660 ** syntax error processing
1661
1662 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1663 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1664
1665 - %destructor
1666 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1667 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1668
1669 - %error-verbose
1670 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1671
1672 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1673 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1674
1675 ** POSIX conformance
1676
1677 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1678 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1679 compatibility with Yacc.
1680
1681 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1682 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1683 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1684 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1685 be consistent.
1686
1687 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1688 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1689
1690 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1691 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1692
1693 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1694 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1695
1696 - Yacc command and library now available
1697 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1698 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1699 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1700 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1701
1702 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1703
1704 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1705 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1706 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1707
1708 ** Other compatibility issues
1709
1710 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1711 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1712 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1713 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1714 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1715 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1716
1717 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1718 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1719
1720 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1721 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1722
1723 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1724 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1725 withdrawn in a future release.
1726
1727 ** GLR parser notes
1728
1729 - GLR and inline
1730 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1731 C keyword "inline".
1732
1733 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1734 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1735
1736 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1737 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1738 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1739 shortcomings:
1740
1741 - a single argument only can be added,
1742 - their types are weak (void *),
1743 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1744 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1745
1746 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1747 For instance:
1748
1749 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1750 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1751 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1752
1753 results in the following signatures:
1754
1755 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1756 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1757
1758 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1759
1760 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1761 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1762
1763 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1764 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1765 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1766
1767 ** #line in output files
1768 - --no-line works properly.
1769
1770 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1771 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1772 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1773 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1774 \f
1775 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1776
1777 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1778
1779 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1780
1781 ** GLR parsers
1782 Fix spurious parse errors.
1783
1784 ** Pure parsers
1785 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1786 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1787
1788 ** Type Clashes
1789 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1790 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1791
1792 untyped: ... typed;
1793
1794 but the converse remains an error:
1795
1796 typed: ... untyped;
1797
1798 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1799 The following code:
1800
1801 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1802
1803 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1804 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1805 \f
1806 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1807
1808 ** GLR parsing
1809 The declaration
1810 %glr-parser
1811 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1812 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1813 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1814 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1815
1816 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1817 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1818
1819 ** Output Directory
1820 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1821 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1822 now creates "bar.c".
1823
1824 ** Undefined token
1825 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1826 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1827
1828 ** Unknown token numbers
1829 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1830 no longer the case.
1831
1832 ** Error token
1833 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1834 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1835 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1836 will be mapped onto another number.
1837
1838 ** Verbose error messages
1839 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1840 error recovery is possible.
1841
1842 ** End token
1843 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1844
1845 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1846 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1847 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1848 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1849 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1850 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1851 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1852 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1853 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1854
1855 ** Traces
1856 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1857
1858 ** Larger grammars
1859 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1860 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1861 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1862 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1863
1864 ** Explicit initial rule
1865 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1866 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1867 graphs as rule 0.
1868
1869 ** Useless rules
1870 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1871 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1872
1873 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1874 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1875
1876 ** Rules never reduced
1877 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1878 reported.
1879
1880 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1881 On a grammar such as
1882
1883 %token useless useful
1884 %%
1885 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1886
1887 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1888 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1889
1890 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1891 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1892
1893 ** Default locations
1894 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1895 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1896 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1897 the computation of @$.
1898
1899 ** Token end-of-file
1900 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1901 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1902 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1903 For instance
1904 %token MYEOF 0
1905 or
1906 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1907
1908 ** Semantic parser
1909 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1910
1911 ** New translations
1912 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1913 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1914
1915 ** Incorrect token definitions
1916 When given
1917 %token 'a' "A"
1918 bison used to output
1919 #define 'a' 65
1920
1921 ** Token definitions as enums
1922 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1923 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1924 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1925
1926 ** Reports
1927 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1928 produces additional information:
1929 - itemset
1930 complete the core item sets with their closure
1931 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1932 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1933 - solved
1934 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1935 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1936 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1937
1938 ** Type clashes
1939 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1940 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1941
1942 %type <foo> bar
1943 %%
1944 bar: '0' {} '0';
1945
1946 This is fixed.
1947
1948 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1949 \f
1950 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1951
1952 ** C Skeleton
1953 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1954 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1955 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1956
1957 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1958 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1959 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1960 kludge will be disabled.
1961
1962 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1963 extended.
1964 \f
1965 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1966
1967 ** File name clashes are detected
1968 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1969 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1970
1971 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1972 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1973 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1974 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1975 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1976 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1977
1978 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1979 many portability hassles.
1980
1981 ** DJGPP support added.
1982
1983 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
1984 \f
1985 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1986
1987 ** Fix C++ issues
1988 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1989 under some conditions.
1990
1991 ** Catch invalid @n
1992 As is done with $n.
1993 \f
1994 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1995
1996 ** Fix Yacc output file names
1997
1998 ** Portability fixes
1999
2000 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2001 \f
2002 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2003
2004 ** Many Bug Fixes
2005
2006 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2007 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2008 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2009 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2010 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2011
2012 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2013 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2014 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2015
2016 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2017 problems as on AIX.
2018
2019 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2020
2021 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2022 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2023
2024 ** User Actions
2025 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2026 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2027 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2028
2029 ** Better C++ compliance
2030 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2031 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2032
2033 ** Reduced Grammars
2034 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2035
2036 ** 64 bit hosts
2037 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2038
2039 ** Error messages
2040 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2041
2042 ** %expect
2043 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2044 any warning.
2045
2046 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2047
2048 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2049
2050 ** Swedish translation
2051
2052 ** Parse errors
2053 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2054 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2055 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2056
2057 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2058 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2059 previous allocations were not freed.
2060
2061 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2062 Some newlines were missing.
2063 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2064
2065 ** Fixed conflict report.
2066 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2067
2068 ** %expect
2069 Was not used.
2070 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2071
2072 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2073
2074 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2075
2076 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2077
2078 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2079 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2080
2081 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2082
2083 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2084 New.
2085
2086 ** --output
2087 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2088 \f
2089 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2090
2091 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2092 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2093 argument.
2094
2095 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2096 experiment.
2097
2098 ** Portability fixes.
2099 \f
2100 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2101
2102 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2103 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2104 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2105 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2106
2107 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2108
2109 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2110
2111 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2112
2113 ** Russian translation added.
2114
2115 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2116
2117 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2118
2119 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2120
2121 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2122
2123 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2124
2125 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2126 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2127
2128 ** New directives.
2129 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2130 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2131
2132 ** @$
2133 Automatic location tracking.
2134 \f
2135 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2136
2137 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2138
2139 ** Added NLS.
2140
2141 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2142
2143 ** There is now a FAQ.
2144 \f
2145 * Changes in version 1.27:
2146
2147 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2148 some systems has been fixed.
2149 \f
2150 * Changes in version 1.26:
2151
2152 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2153
2154 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2155
2156 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2157
2158 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2159
2160 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2161
2162 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2163
2164 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2165 not provide alloca().
2166 \f
2167 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2168
2169 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2170 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2171
2172 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2173 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2174 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2175
2176 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2177 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2178 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2179 purposes.
2180
2181 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2182 directives in the parser file.
2183
2184 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2185 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2186
2187 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2188 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2189 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2190 a switch statement body.
2191 \f
2192 * Changes in version 1.23:
2193
2194 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2195 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2196 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2197 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2198
2199 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2200 \f
2201 * Changes in version 1.22:
2202
2203 --help option added.
2204 \f
2205 * Changes in version 1.20:
2206
2207 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2208
2209 -----
2210
2211 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2212
2213 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2214
2215 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2216 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2217 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2218 (at your option) any later version.
2219
2220 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2221 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2222 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2223 GNU General Public License for more details.
2224
2225 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2226 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2227
2228 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2229 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2230 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2231 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2232 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2233 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2234 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2235 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2236 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2237 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2238 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2239 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2240 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2241 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2242 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2243 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2244 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2245 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2246 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts
2247
2248 Local Variables:
2249 mode: outline
2250 fill-column: 76
2251 End: