3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 *** C++ with Variants (lalr1.cc)
9 Fix a compiler warning when no %destructor use $$.
11 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.3 (2015-01-15) [stable]
15 *** C++ with Variants (lalr1.cc)
17 Problems with %destructor and '%define parse.assert' have been fixed.
19 *** Named %union support (yacc.c, glr.c)
21 Bison 3.0 introduced a regression on named %union such as
23 %union foo { int ival; };
25 The possibility to use a name was introduced "for Yacc compatibility".
26 It is however not required by POSIX Yacc, and its usefulness is not clear.
28 *** %define api.value.type union with %defines (yacc.c, glr.c)
30 The C parsers were broken when %defines was used together with "%define
31 api.value.type union".
33 *** Redeclarations are reported in proper order
43 /tmp/foo.yy:2.10-11: error: %printer redeclaration for FOO
46 /tmp/foo.yy:3.10-11: previous declaration
50 Now, the "previous" declaration is always the first one.
55 Bison now installs various files in its docdir (which defaults to
56 '/usr/local/share/doc/bison'), including the three fully blown examples
57 extracted from the documentation:
60 Reverse polish calculator, a simple introductory example.
62 Multi-function Calc, a calculator with memory and functions and located
65 a calculator in C++ using variant support and token constructors.
67 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.2 (2013-12-05) [stable]
71 *** Generated source files when errors are reported
73 When warnings are issued and -Werror is set, bison would still generate
74 the source files (*.c, *.h...). As a consequence, some runs of "make"
75 could fail the first time, but not the second (as the files were generated
78 This is fixed: bison no longer generates this source files, but, of
79 course, still produces the various reports (*.output, *.xml, etc.).
81 *** %empty is used in reports
83 Empty right-hand sides are denoted by '%empty' in all the reports (text,
84 dot, XML and formats derived from it).
86 *** YYERROR and variants
88 When C++ variant support is enabled, an error triggered via YYERROR, but
89 not caught via error recovery, resulted in a double deletion.
91 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.1 (2013-11-12) [stable]
95 *** Errors in caret diagnostics
97 On some platforms, some errors could result in endless diagnostics.
99 *** Fixes of the -Werror option
101 Options such as "-Werror -Wno-error=foo" were still turning "foo"
102 diagnostics into errors instead of warnings. This is fixed.
104 Actually, for consistency with GCC, "-Wno-error=foo -Werror" now also
105 leaves "foo" diagnostics as warnings. Similarly, with "-Werror=foo
106 -Wno-error", "foo" diagnostics are now errors.
110 As demonstrated in the documentation, one can now leave spaces between
115 The yacc.1 man page is no longer installed if --disable-yacc was
118 *** Fixes in the test suite
120 Bugs and portability issues.
122 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0 (2013-07-25) [stable]
124 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
126 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
127 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
128 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
130 ** Backward incompatible changes
132 *** Obsolete features
134 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
136 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
137 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
139 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
140 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
142 Missing semicolons at the end of actions are no longer added (as announced
145 *** Use of YACC='bison -y'
147 TL;DR: With Autoconf <= 2.69, pass -Wno-yacc to (AM_)YFLAGS if you use
150 Traditional Yacc generates 'y.tab.c' whatever the name of the input file.
151 Therefore Makefiles written for Yacc expect 'y.tab.c' (and possibly
152 'y.tab.h' and 'y.outout') to be generated from 'foo.y'.
154 To this end, for ages, AC_PROG_YACC, Autoconf's macro to look for an
155 implementation of Yacc, was using Bison as 'bison -y'. While it does
156 ensure compatible output file names, it also enables warnings for
157 incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc. In other words, 'bison -y' triggers
158 warnings for Bison extensions.
160 Autoconf 2.70+ fixes this incompatibility by using YACC='bison -o y.tab.c'
161 (which also generates 'y.tab.h' and 'y.output' when needed).
162 Alternatively, disable Yacc warnings by passing '-Wno-yacc' to your Yacc
163 flags (YFLAGS, or AM_YFLAGS with Automake).
167 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
169 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
170 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
171 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
172 preprocessor expansion:
174 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
176 This is fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
177 identifiers for user-provided variables.
179 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
181 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
182 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
184 *** Warnings about useless %pure-parser/%define api.pure are restored
186 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
188 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
193 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
194 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
195 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
197 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
198 the caret information only. For instance on:
205 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
206 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
210 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
211 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
215 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
217 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
218 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
220 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
222 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
223 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
224 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
226 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
227 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
228 errors (and only those):
230 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
232 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
233 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
235 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
237 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
239 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
240 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
242 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
243 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
244 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
246 *** The display of warnings is now richer
248 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
250 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
252 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
253 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
254 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
256 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
259 bison: warnings being treated as errors
260 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
264 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
266 *** Deprecated constructs
268 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
269 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
270 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
272 *** Useless semantic types
274 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
275 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
276 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
277 types that trigger the warning:
281 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
282 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
284 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
286 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
287 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
289 *** Undefined but unused symbols
291 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
292 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
295 %destructor {} symbol2
300 *** Useless destructors or printers
302 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
303 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
304 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
305 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
307 %token <type1> token1
311 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
312 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
316 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
317 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
321 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
323 compare the previous version of bison:
326 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
327 $ bison -Werror foo.y
328 bison: warnings being treated as errors
329 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
331 with the new behavior:
334 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
335 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
336 $ bison -Werror foo.y
337 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
338 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
340 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
345 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
350 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
351 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
352 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
357 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
358 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
360 ** Incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc
362 The 'yacc' category is no longer part of '-Wall', enable it explicitly
365 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
367 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
368 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
369 or more arguments. Instead of
371 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
372 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
373 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
374 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
378 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
380 ** Types of values for %define variables
382 Bison used to make no difference between '%define foo bar' and '%define
383 foo "bar"'. The former is now called a 'keyword value', and the latter a
384 'string value'. A third kind was added: 'code values', such as '%define
387 Keyword variables are used for fixed value sets, e.g.,
391 Code variables are used for value in the target language, e.g.,
393 %define api.value.type {struct semantic_type}
395 String variables are used remaining cases, e.g. file names.
397 ** Variable api.token.prefix
399 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
400 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
401 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
403 %token FILE for ERROR
404 %define api.token.prefix {TOK_}
406 start: FILE for ERROR;
408 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
409 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
410 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
411 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
413 ** Variable api.value.type
415 This new %define variable supersedes the #define macro YYSTYPE. The use
416 of YYSTYPE is discouraged. In particular, #defining YYSTYPE *and* either
417 using %union or %defining api.value.type results in undefined behavior.
419 Either define api.value.type, or use "%union":
426 %token <ival> INT "integer"
427 %token <sval> STRING "string"
428 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <ival>
429 %destructor { free ($$); } <sval>
432 yylval.ival = 42; return INT;
433 yylval.sval = "42"; return STRING;
435 The %define variable api.value.type supports both keyword and code values.
437 The keyword value 'union' means that the user provides genuine types, not
438 union member names such as "ival" and "sval" above (WARNING: will fail if
439 -y/--yacc/%yacc is enabled).
441 %define api.value.type union
442 %token <int> INT "integer"
443 %token <char *> STRING "string"
444 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <int>
445 %destructor { free ($$); } <char *>
448 yylval.INT = 42; return INT;
449 yylval.STRING = "42"; return STRING;
451 The keyword value variant is somewhat equivalent, but for C++ special
452 provision is made to allow classes to be used (more about this below).
454 %define api.value.type variant
455 %token <int> INT "integer"
456 %token <std::string> STRING "string"
458 Code values (in braces) denote user defined types. This is where YYSTYPE
476 %define api.value.type {struct my_value}
477 %token <u.ival> INT "integer"
478 %token <u.sval> STRING "string"
479 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <u.ival>
480 %destructor { free ($$); } <u.sval>
483 yylval.u.ival = 42; return INT;
484 yylval.u.sval = "42"; return STRING;
486 ** Variable parse.error
488 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
489 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
492 ** Renamed %define variables
494 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
495 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
497 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
498 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
499 namespace -> api.namespace
500 stype -> api.value.type
502 ** Semantic predicates
504 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
506 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
507 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
508 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
509 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
510 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
513 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
515 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
516 reduce/reduce conflicts.
518 ** Tokens are numbered in their order of appearance
520 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
522 With '%token A B', A had a number less than the one of B. However,
523 precedence declarations used to generate a reversed order. This is now
524 fixed, and introducing tokens with any of %token, %left, %right,
525 %precedence, or %nonassoc yields the same result.
527 When mixing declarations of tokens with a litteral character (e.g., 'a')
528 or with an identifier (e.g., B) in a precedence declaration, Bison
529 numbered the litteral characters first. For example
533 would lead to the tokens declared in this order: 'c' 'd' A B. Again, the
534 input order is now preserved.
536 These changes were made so that one can remove useless precedence and
537 associativity declarations (i.e., map %nonassoc, %left or %right to
538 %precedence, or to %token) and get exactly the same output.
540 ** Useless precedence and associativity
542 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
544 When developing and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
545 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
546 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
547 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
548 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
549 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
550 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
552 *** Precedence warning category
554 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
555 useless precedence and associativity directives.
557 *** Useless associativity
559 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
560 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
561 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
562 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
576 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
580 *** Useless precedence
582 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
583 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
584 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
585 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
589 exp: "var" '=' "number";
593 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
597 *** Useless precedence and associativity
599 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
604 exp: "var" '=' "number";
608 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
614 With help from Joel E. Denny and Gabriel Rassoul.
616 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
617 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
618 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
619 %empty. On the following grammar:
629 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
632 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
636 ** Java skeleton improvements
638 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
639 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
640 and "%define init_throws".
641 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
643 The Java skeleton now supports push parsing.
644 Contributed by Dennis Heimbigner.
646 ** C++ skeletons improvements
648 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
650 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
651 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
652 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
654 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
656 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
658 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
660 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
661 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
662 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
663 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
664 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
665 factory invoked by the user actions).
667 *** %define api.value.type variant
669 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
670 from Théophile Ranquet.
672 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
675 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
678 %type <::std::string> item;
679 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
682 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
686 %empty { /* Generates an empty string list. */ }
687 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
691 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
692 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
695 *** %define api.token.constructor
697 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
698 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
699 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
701 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
703 parser::location_type loc = ...;
705 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
707 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
709 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
715 There are operator- and operator-= for 'location'. Negative line/column
716 increments can no longer underflow the resulting value.
718 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7.1 (2013-04-15) [stable]
722 *** Fix compiler attribute portability (yacc.c)
724 With locations enabled, __attribute__ was used unprotected.
726 *** Fix some compiler warnings (lalr1.cc)
728 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
732 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
734 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
736 ** Diagnostics are improved
738 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
740 *** Changes in the format of error messages
742 This used to be the format of many error reports:
744 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
745 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
749 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
750 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
752 *** New format for error reports: carets
754 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
756 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
759 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
765 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
766 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
768 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
769 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
771 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
772 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
774 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
775 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
778 The default behavior for now is still not to display these unless
779 explicitly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
780 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
783 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
785 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
786 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
787 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
788 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
789 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
792 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
793 "%define api.pure full".
795 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
797 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
798 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
799 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
800 then responsible to define her type.
802 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
803 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
806 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
807 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
810 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
811 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
814 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
816 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
817 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
818 before re-throwing the exception.
820 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
823 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
825 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
827 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
828 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
829 numbered and left-justified.
831 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
832 diamond shaped nodes.
834 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
835 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
837 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
839 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
840 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
844 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
845 have been fixed and extended.
847 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
848 were not properly documented.
850 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
852 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
854 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
855 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
856 reporting them to us.
860 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
861 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
864 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
866 Null characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
868 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
869 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
871 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
873 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
875 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
879 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
881 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
882 users to the appropriate place to report them.
884 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
886 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
887 generated, are removed.
889 All the generated headers are self-contained.
891 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
893 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
894 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
895 For instance the header generated from
897 %define api.prefix "calc"
898 %defines "lib/parse.h"
900 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
902 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
904 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
907 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
908 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
909 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
913 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
915 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
916 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
919 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
923 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
924 suite have been fixed.
926 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
928 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
929 invalid C++. This is fixed.
931 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
933 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
935 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
937 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
941 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
942 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
943 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
945 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
949 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
953 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
955 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
957 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
959 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
960 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
963 ** Type names in actions
965 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
966 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
968 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
970 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
971 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
973 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
977 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
978 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
982 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
983 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
986 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
988 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
991 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
992 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
994 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
997 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
999 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
1000 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
1001 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
1002 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
1005 ** Generated Parser Headers
1007 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
1009 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
1010 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
1015 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
1017 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
1019 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
1020 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
1022 int bar_parse (void);
1026 #define yyparse bar_parse
1029 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
1030 single compilation unit.
1032 *** Exported symbols in C++
1034 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
1035 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
1036 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
1040 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
1043 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
1045 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
1046 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
1047 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
1048 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
1049 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
1050 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
1051 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
1053 The following examples compares both:
1055 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
1056 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
1057 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
1063 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
1064 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
1066 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
1067 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
1068 > # if defined YYDEBUG
1070 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
1072 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
1075 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
1079 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
1080 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
1083 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
1084 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
1085 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
1086 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
1091 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
1092 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
1093 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
1096 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
1097 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
1100 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
1102 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
1104 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
1106 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
1110 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
1112 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
1114 ** glr.c improvements:
1116 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
1118 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
1119 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
1121 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
1123 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
1124 when -std is passed to GCC).
1126 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
1128 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
1129 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
1133 *** C++11 compatibility:
1135 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
1140 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
1141 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
1143 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
1144 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
1146 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
1148 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
1149 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
1150 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
1152 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
1154 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1155 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1157 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1161 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
1162 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
1163 documentation were fixed.
1165 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
1167 ** Changes in the manual:
1169 *** %printer is documented
1171 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
1172 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
1174 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
1175 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
1177 *** Several improvements have been made:
1179 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
1180 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
1181 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
1182 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
1186 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
1188 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
1189 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
1191 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
1193 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
1195 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
1196 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
1198 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
1200 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
1201 halts in the middle of its course.
1203 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
1205 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
1207 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
1208 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
1209 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
1210 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
1211 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
1213 ** Named references:
1215 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
1216 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
1219 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
1220 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
1221 as named references:
1223 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
1224 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
1226 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
1228 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
1229 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
1231 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
1232 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
1233 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
1235 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
1236 will help to stabilize them.
1237 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
1239 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
1241 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
1242 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
1243 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
1244 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
1245 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
1246 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
1247 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
1248 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
1249 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
1251 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
1252 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
1253 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
1254 file with these directives:
1256 %define lr.type lalr
1257 %define lr.type ielr
1258 %define lr.type canonical-lr
1260 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
1261 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
1262 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
1265 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1268 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
1270 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
1272 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
1273 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
1274 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
1275 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
1276 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
1277 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
1278 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
1279 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
1280 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
1281 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
1284 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
1285 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
1286 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
1287 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
1288 inconsistent states.
1290 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
1291 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
1292 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
1293 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
1294 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
1295 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
1296 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
1297 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
1300 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
1301 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
1303 %define parse.lac full
1305 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
1306 details including a few caveats.
1308 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
1311 ** %define improvements:
1313 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
1315 Each of these command-line options
1318 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
1321 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
1323 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
1325 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
1327 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
1328 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
1329 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
1330 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
1332 *** Variables renamed:
1334 The following %define variables
1337 lr.keep_unreachable_states
1339 have been renamed to
1342 lr.keep-unreachable-states
1344 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
1345 for backward compatibility.
1347 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
1349 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
1350 within quotations marks. For example,
1352 %define api.push-pull "push"
1356 %define api.push-pull push
1358 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1360 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1362 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1364 ** Character literals not of length one:
1366 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1367 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1368 the following grammar to be the same token:
1374 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1375 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1377 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1379 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1380 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1381 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1382 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1384 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1386 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1387 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1388 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1389 and "last" members, instead of
1391 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1395 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1396 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1400 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1406 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1410 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1411 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1415 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1419 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1421 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1422 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1423 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1424 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1426 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1428 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1429 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1430 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1431 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1432 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1433 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1434 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1435 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1437 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1439 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1440 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1441 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1442 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1444 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1448 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1450 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1451 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1452 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1453 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1454 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1455 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1456 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1458 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1460 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1461 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1462 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1463 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1464 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1466 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1467 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1468 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1469 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1470 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1471 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1472 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1473 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1474 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1475 shifted or discarded.
1477 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1478 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1479 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1480 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1482 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1483 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1484 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1485 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1486 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1487 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1488 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1489 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1490 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1491 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1492 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1493 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1496 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1498 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1500 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1501 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1503 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1505 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1507 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1509 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1510 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1512 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1514 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1516 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1517 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1518 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1519 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1522 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1523 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1524 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1525 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1527 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1528 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1529 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1530 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1532 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1534 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1535 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1537 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1539 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1541 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1542 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1543 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1544 suppress all warnings:
1548 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1550 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1551 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1552 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1556 This bug has been fixed.
1558 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1560 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1561 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1563 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1566 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1568 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1571 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1572 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1573 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1574 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1576 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1578 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1580 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1581 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1582 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1583 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1586 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1588 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1589 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1590 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1591 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1592 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1593 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1594 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1595 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1596 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1598 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1600 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1601 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1604 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1606 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1610 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1611 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1614 %code requires {CODE}
1615 %code provides {CODE}
1618 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1619 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1620 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1621 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1622 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1624 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1625 is still considered experimental.
1627 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1629 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1630 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1631 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1632 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1633 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1636 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1637 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1638 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1639 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1640 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1641 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1642 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1644 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1646 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1647 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1648 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1649 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1650 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1651 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1652 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1653 be removed altogether.
1655 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1656 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1657 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1658 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1659 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1660 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1661 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1662 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1663 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1664 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1666 ** Internationalization.
1668 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1669 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1672 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1674 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1675 declarations have been fixed.
1677 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1679 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1680 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1682 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1686 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1688 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1689 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1690 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1691 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1692 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1695 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1697 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1699 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1701 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1702 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1703 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1704 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1707 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1709 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1712 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1714 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1717 %define NAME "VALUE"
1719 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1723 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1724 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1728 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1729 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1730 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1731 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1732 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1734 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1735 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1737 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1739 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1740 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1742 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1743 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1744 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1748 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1749 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1750 %skeleton to select it.
1752 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1754 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1755 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1756 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1760 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1761 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1762 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1763 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1765 ** XML Automaton Report
1767 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1768 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1769 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1770 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1772 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1773 %defines. For example:
1777 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1778 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1779 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1780 instead of "unused".
1782 ** Unreachable State Removal
1784 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1785 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1786 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1788 1. Removes unreachable states.
1790 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1791 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1792 directives in existing grammar files.
1794 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1795 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1797 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1799 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1801 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1802 for further discussion.
1804 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1806 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1807 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1808 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1809 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1810 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1811 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1812 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1815 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1818 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1821 %file-prefix "parser"
1825 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1827 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1828 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1829 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1830 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1833 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1834 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1835 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1836 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1838 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1839 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1840 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1841 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1843 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1844 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1846 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1848 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1849 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1852 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1854 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1855 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1857 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1859 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1860 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1861 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1863 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1864 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1866 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1868 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1871 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1872 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1873 declared semantic type tags.
1875 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1876 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1879 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1880 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1881 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1882 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1884 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1885 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1888 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1891 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1892 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1893 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1895 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1896 completely removed from Bison.
1898 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1900 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1901 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1902 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1903 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1904 and is required by POSIX.
1906 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1907 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1909 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1913 %union { char *string; }
1914 %token <string> STRING1
1915 %token <string> STRING2
1916 %type <string> string1
1917 %type <string> string2
1918 %union { char character; }
1919 %token <character> CHR
1920 %type <character> chr
1921 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1922 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1923 %destructor { } <character>
1925 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1926 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1927 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1928 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1929 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1931 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1932 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1935 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1936 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1937 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1938 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1939 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1941 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1942 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1944 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1945 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1946 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1947 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1948 declared after the first %union.
1950 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1951 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1952 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1953 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1954 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1955 after the token definitions.
1957 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1958 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1960 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1961 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1964 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1965 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1966 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1970 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1971 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1972 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1973 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1974 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1977 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1978 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1979 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1980 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1983 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1984 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1985 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1988 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1989 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1990 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1991 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1995 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1996 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1997 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1998 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1999 * Bison-generated definitions. */
2002 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
2003 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
2005 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
2006 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
2008 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
2009 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
2010 in a future release.
2012 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
2014 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
2015 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
2017 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
2018 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
2020 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
2022 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
2023 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
2024 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
2026 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
2028 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
2030 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
2031 their contents together.
2033 ** New warning: unused values
2034 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
2035 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
2037 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
2041 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
2042 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
2043 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
2045 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
2046 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
2048 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
2051 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
2052 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
2053 values are used, e.g.:
2055 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
2056 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
2059 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
2060 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
2062 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
2064 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
2065 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
2067 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
2068 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
2069 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
2070 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
2072 ** %expect, %expect-rr
2073 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
2074 instead of warnings.
2076 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
2077 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
2078 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
2080 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
2082 ** %require "VERSION"
2083 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
2084 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
2086 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
2087 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
2088 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
2089 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
2090 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
2092 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
2093 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
2094 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
2095 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
2097 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
2098 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
2100 ** DJGPP support added.
2102 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
2104 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
2106 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
2107 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
2108 language is still English. For details, please see the new
2109 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
2110 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
2111 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
2113 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
2114 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
2115 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
2116 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
2118 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
2119 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
2120 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
2122 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
2123 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
2124 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
2125 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
2126 unexpected "number"'.
2128 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
2130 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
2132 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
2133 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
2134 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
2135 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
2136 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
2138 - Error token location.
2139 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
2140 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
2141 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
2142 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
2144 - Semicolon changes:
2145 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
2146 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
2148 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
2149 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
2150 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
2151 forget a closing quote.
2153 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
2157 - GLR grammars now support locations.
2159 - New directive: %initial-action.
2160 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
2161 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
2163 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
2164 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
2166 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
2167 This is a GNU extension.
2169 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
2170 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
2172 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
2174 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
2175 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
2179 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
2180 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
2181 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
2182 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
2183 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
2184 these violations will become errors again.
2186 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
2187 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
2189 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
2191 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
2193 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
2194 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
2196 ** syntax error processing
2198 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
2199 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
2202 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
2203 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
2206 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
2208 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
2209 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
2211 ** POSIX conformance
2213 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
2214 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
2215 compatibility with Yacc.
2217 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
2218 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
2219 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
2220 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
2223 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
2224 declared before use. C99 requires this.
2226 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
2227 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
2229 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
2230 output as "foo\\bar.y".
2232 - Yacc command and library now available
2233 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
2234 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
2235 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
2236 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
2238 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
2240 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
2241 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
2242 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
2244 ** Other compatibility issues
2246 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
2247 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
2248 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
2249 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
2250 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
2251 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
2253 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
2254 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
2256 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
2257 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
2259 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
2260 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
2261 withdrawn in a future release.
2266 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
2269 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
2270 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
2272 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
2273 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
2274 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
2277 - a single argument only can be added,
2278 - their types are weak (void *),
2279 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
2280 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
2282 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
2285 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
2286 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
2287 %parse-param {int *randomness}
2289 results in the following signatures:
2291 int yylex (int *nastiness);
2292 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2294 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
2296 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
2297 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2299 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
2300 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
2301 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
2303 ** #line in output files
2304 - --no-line works properly.
2306 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
2307 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
2308 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
2309 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
2311 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
2313 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
2315 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
2318 Fix spurious parse errors.
2321 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
2322 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
2325 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
2326 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
2330 but the converse remains an error:
2334 ** Values of mid-rule actions
2337 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
2339 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
2340 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
2342 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
2347 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
2348 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
2349 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
2350 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2352 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
2353 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
2356 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2357 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2358 now creates "bar.c".
2361 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2362 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2364 ** Unknown token numbers
2365 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2369 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2370 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2371 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2372 will be mapped onto another number.
2374 ** Verbose error messages
2375 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2376 error recovery is possible.
2379 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2381 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2382 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2383 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2384 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2385 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2386 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2387 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2388 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2389 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2392 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2395 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2396 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2397 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2398 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2400 ** Explicit initial rule
2401 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2402 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2406 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2407 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2409 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2410 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2412 ** Rules never reduced
2413 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2416 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
2417 On a grammar such as
2419 %token useless useful
2421 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2423 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2424 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2426 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2427 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2429 ** Default locations
2430 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2431 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2432 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2433 the computation of @$.
2435 ** Token end-of-file
2436 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2437 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2438 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2442 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2445 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2448 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2449 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2451 ** Incorrect token definitions
2454 bison used to output
2457 ** Token definitions as enums
2458 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2459 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2460 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2463 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2464 produces additional information:
2466 complete the core item sets with their closure
2467 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2468 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2470 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2471 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2472 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2475 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2476 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2484 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2486 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2489 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2490 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2491 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2493 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2494 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2495 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2496 kludge will be disabled.
2498 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2501 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2503 ** File name clashes are detected
2504 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2505 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2507 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2508 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2509 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2510 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2511 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2512 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2514 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2515 many portability hassles.
2517 ** DJGPP support added.
2519 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2521 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2524 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2525 under some conditions.
2530 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2532 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2534 ** Portability fixes
2536 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2538 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2542 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2543 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2544 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2545 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2546 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2548 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2549 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2550 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2552 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2555 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2557 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2558 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2561 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2562 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2563 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2565 ** Better C++ compliance
2566 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2567 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2570 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2573 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2576 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2579 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2582 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2584 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2586 ** Swedish translation
2589 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2590 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2591 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2593 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2594 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2595 previous allocations were not freed.
2597 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2598 Some newlines were missing.
2599 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2601 ** Fixed conflict report.
2602 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2606 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2608 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2610 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2612 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2614 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2615 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2617 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2619 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2623 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2625 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2627 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2628 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2631 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2634 ** Portability fixes.
2636 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2638 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2639 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2640 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2641 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2643 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2645 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2647 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2649 ** Russian translation added.
2651 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2653 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2655 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2657 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2659 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2661 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2662 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2665 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2666 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2669 Automatic location tracking.
2671 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2673 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2677 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2679 ** There is now a FAQ.
2681 * Changes in version 1.27:
2683 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2684 some systems has been fixed.
2686 * Changes in version 1.26:
2688 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2690 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2692 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2694 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2696 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2698 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2700 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2701 not provide alloca().
2703 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2705 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2706 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2708 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2709 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2710 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2712 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2713 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2714 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2717 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2718 directives in the parser file.
2720 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2721 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2723 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2724 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2725 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2726 a switch statement body.
2728 * Changes in version 1.23:
2730 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2731 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2732 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2733 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2735 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2737 * Changes in version 1.22:
2739 --help option added.
2741 * Changes in version 1.20:
2743 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2747 Copyright (C) 1995-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2749 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2751 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2752 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2753 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2754 (at your option) any later version.
2756 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2757 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2758 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2759 GNU General Public License for more details.
2761 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2762 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2764 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2765 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2766 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2767 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2768 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2769 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2770 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2771 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2772 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2773 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2774 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2775 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2776 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2777 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2778 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2779 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2780 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2781 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2782 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts parsers yystackp yyval yynerrs
2783 LocalWords: Théophile Ranquet Santet fno fnone stype associativity Tolmer
2784 LocalWords: Wprecedence Rassoul Wempty Paolo Bonzini parser's Michiel loc
2785 LocalWords: redeclaration sval fcaret reentrant XSLT xsl Wmaybe yyvsp Tedi
2786 LocalWords: pragmas noreturn untyped Rozenman unexpanded Wojciech Polak
2787 LocalWords: Alexandre MERCHANTABILITY yytype