3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
6 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7.90 (2013-05-30) [beta]
8 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
10 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
11 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
12 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
14 ** Backward incompatible changes
18 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
20 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
21 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
23 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
24 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
26 Missing semicolons at the end of actions are no longer added (as announced
29 *** Use of YACC='bison -y'
31 TL;DR: With Autoconf <= 2.69, pass -Wno-yacc to (AM_)YFLAGS if you use
34 Traditional Yacc generates 'y.tab.c' whatever the name of the input file.
35 Therefore Makefiles written for Yacc expect 'y.tab.c' (and possibly
36 'y.tab.h' and 'y.outout') to be generated from 'foo.y'.
38 To this end, for ages, AC_PROG_YACC, Autoconf's macro to look for an
39 implementation of Yacc, was using Bison as 'bison -y'. While it does
40 ensure compatible output file names, it also enables warnings for
41 incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc. In other words, 'bison -y' triggers
42 warnings for Bison extensions.
44 Autoconf 2.70+ fixes this incompatibility by using YACC='bison -o y.tab.c'
45 (which also generates 'y.tab.h' and 'y.output' when needed).
46 Alternatively, disable Yacc warnings by passing '-Wno-yacc' to your Yacc
47 flags (YFLAGS, or AM_YFLAGS with Automake).
51 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
53 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
54 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
55 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
56 preprocessor expansion:
58 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
60 This is fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
61 identifiers for user-provided variables.
63 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
65 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
66 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
68 *** Warnings about useless %pure-parser/%define api.pure are restored
70 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
72 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
77 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
78 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
79 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
81 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
82 the caret information only. For instance on:
89 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
90 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
94 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
95 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
99 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
101 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
102 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
104 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
106 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
107 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
108 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
110 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
111 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
112 errors (and only those):
114 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
116 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
117 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
119 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
121 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
123 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
124 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
126 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
127 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
128 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
130 *** The display of warnings is now richer
132 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
134 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
136 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
137 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
138 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
140 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
143 bison: warnings being treated as errors
144 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
148 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
150 *** Deprecated constructs
152 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
153 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
154 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
156 *** Useless semantic types
158 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
159 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
160 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
161 types that trigger the warning:
165 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
166 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
168 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
170 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
171 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
173 *** Undefined but unused symbols
175 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
176 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
179 %destructor {} symbol2
184 *** Useless destructors or printers
186 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
187 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
188 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
189 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
191 %token <type1> token1
195 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
196 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
200 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
201 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
205 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
207 compare the previous version of bison:
210 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
211 $ bison -Werror foo.y
212 bison: warnings being treated as errors
213 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
215 with the new behavior:
218 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
219 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
220 $ bison -Werror foo.y
221 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
222 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
224 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
229 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
234 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
235 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
236 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
241 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
242 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
244 ** Incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc
246 The 'yacc' category is no longer part of '-Wall', enable it explicitly
249 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
251 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
252 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
253 or more arguments. Instead of
255 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
256 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
257 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
258 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
262 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
264 ** Types of values for %define variables
266 Bison used to make no difference between '%define foo bar' and '%define
267 foo "bar"'. The former is now called a 'keyword value', and the latter a
268 'string value'. A third kind was added: 'code values', such as '%define
271 Keyword variables are used for fixed value sets, e.g.,
275 Code variables are used for value in the target language, e.g.,
277 %define api.value.type {struct semantic_type}
279 String variables are used remaining cases, e.g. file names.
281 ** Variable api.token.prefix
283 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
284 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
285 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
287 %token FILE for ERROR
288 %define api.token.prefix {TOK_}
290 start: FILE for ERROR;
292 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
293 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
294 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
295 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
297 ** Variable api.value.type
299 This new %define variable supersedes the #define macro YYSTYPE. The use
300 of YYSTYPE is discouraged. In particular, #defining YYSTYPE *and* either
301 using %union or %defining api.value.type results in undefined behavior.
303 Either define api.value.type, or use "%union":
310 %token <ival> INT "integer"
311 %token <sval> STRING "string"
312 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <ival>
313 %destructor { free ($$); } <sval>
316 yylval.ival = 42; return INT;
317 yylval.sval = "42"; return STRING;
319 The %define variable api.value.type supports both keyword and code values.
321 The keyword value 'union' means that the user provides genuine types, not
322 union member names such as "ival" and "sval" above (WARNING: will fail if
323 -y/--yacc/%yacc is enabled).
325 %define api.value.type union
326 %token <int> INT "integer"
327 %token <char *> STRING "string"
328 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <int>
329 %destructor { free ($$); } <char *>
332 yylval.INT = 42; return INT;
333 yylval.STRING = "42"; return STRING;
335 The keyword value variant is somewhat equivalent, but for C++ special
336 provision is made to allow classes to be used (more about this below).
338 %define api.value.type variant
339 %token <int> INT "integer"
340 %token <std::string> STRING "string"
342 Code values (in braces) denote user defined types. This is where YYSTYPE
360 %define api.value.type {struct my_value}
361 %token <u.ival> INT "integer"
362 %token <u.sval> STRING "string"
363 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <u.ival>
364 %destructor { free ($$); } <u.sval>
367 yylval.u.ival = 42; return INT;
368 yylval.u.sval = "42"; return STRING;
370 ** Variable parse.error
372 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
373 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
376 ** Renamed %define variables
378 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
379 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
381 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
382 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
383 namespace -> api.namespace
384 stype -> api.value.type
386 ** Semantic predicates
388 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
390 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
391 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
392 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
393 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
394 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
397 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
399 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
400 reduce/reduce conflicts.
402 ** Tokens are numbered in their order of appearance
404 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
406 With '%token A B', A had a number less than the one of B. However,
407 precedence declarations used to generate a reversed order. This is now
408 fixed, and introducing tokens with any of %token, %left, %right,
409 %precedence, or %nonassoc yields the same result.
411 When mixing declarations of tokens with a litteral character (e.g., 'a')
412 or with an identifier (e.g., B) in a precedence declaration, Bison
413 numbered the litteral characters first. For example
417 would lead to the tokens declared in this order: 'c' 'd' A B. Again, the
418 input order is now preserved.
420 These changes were made so that one can remove useless precedence and
421 associativity declarations (i.e., map %nonassoc, %left or %right to
422 %precedence, or to %token) and get exactly the same output.
424 ** Useless precedence and associativity
426 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
428 When developing and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
429 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
430 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
431 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
432 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
433 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
434 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
436 *** Precedence warning category
438 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
439 useless precedence and associativity directives.
441 *** Useless associativity
443 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
444 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
445 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
446 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
460 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
464 *** Useless precedence
466 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
467 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
468 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
469 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
473 exp: "var" '=' "number";
477 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
481 *** Useless precedence and associativity
483 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
488 exp: "var" '=' "number";
492 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
498 With help from Joel E. Denny and Gabriel Rassoul.
500 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
501 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
502 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
503 %empty. On the following grammar:
513 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
516 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
520 ** Java skeleton improvements
522 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
523 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
524 and "%define init_throws".
525 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
527 The Java skeleton now supports push parsing.
528 Contributed by Dennis Heimbigner.
530 ** C++ skeletons improvements
532 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
534 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
535 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
536 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
538 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
540 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
542 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
544 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
545 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
546 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
547 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
548 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
549 factory invoked by the user actions).
551 *** %define api.value.type variant
553 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
554 from Théophile Ranquet.
556 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
559 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
562 %type <::std::string> item;
563 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
566 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
570 %empty { /* Generates an empty string list. */ }
571 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
575 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
576 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
579 *** %define api.token.constructor
581 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
582 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
583 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
585 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
587 parser::location_type loc = ...;
589 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
591 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
593 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
599 There are operator- and operator-= for 'location'. Negative line/column
600 increments can no longer underflow the resulting value.
602 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7.1 (2013-04-15) [stable]
606 *** Fix compiler attribute portability (yacc.c)
608 With locations enabled, __attribute__ was used unprotected.
610 *** Fix some compiler warnings (lalr1.cc)
612 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
616 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
618 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
620 ** Diagnostics are improved
622 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
624 *** Changes in the format of error messages
626 This used to be the format of many error reports:
628 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
629 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
633 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
634 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
636 *** New format for error reports: carets
638 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
640 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
643 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
649 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
650 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
652 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
653 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
655 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
656 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
658 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
659 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
662 The default behavior for now is still not to display these unless
663 explicitly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
664 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
667 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
669 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
670 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
671 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
672 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
673 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
676 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
677 "%define api.pure full".
679 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
681 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
682 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
683 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
684 then responsible to define her type.
686 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
687 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
690 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
691 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
694 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
695 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
698 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
700 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
701 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
702 before re-throwing the exception.
704 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
707 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
709 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
711 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
712 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
713 numbered and left-justified.
715 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
716 diamond shaped nodes.
718 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
719 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
721 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
723 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
724 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
728 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
729 have been fixed and extended.
731 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
732 were not properly documented.
734 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
736 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
738 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
739 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
740 reporting them to us.
744 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
745 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
748 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
750 Null characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
752 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
753 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
755 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
757 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
759 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
763 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
765 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
766 users to the appropriate place to report them.
768 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
770 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
771 generated, are removed.
773 All the generated headers are self-contained.
775 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
777 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
778 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
779 For instance the header generated from
781 %define api.prefix "calc"
782 %defines "lib/parse.h"
784 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
786 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
788 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
791 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
792 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
793 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
797 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
799 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
800 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
803 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
807 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
808 suite have been fixed.
810 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
812 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
813 invalid C++. This is fixed.
815 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
817 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
819 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
821 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
825 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
826 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
827 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
829 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
833 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
837 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
839 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
841 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
843 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
844 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
847 ** Type names in actions
849 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
850 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
852 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
854 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
855 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
857 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
861 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
862 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
866 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
867 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
870 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
872 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
875 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
876 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
878 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
881 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
883 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
884 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
885 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
886 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
889 ** Generated Parser Headers
891 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
893 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
894 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
899 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
901 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
903 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
904 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
906 int bar_parse (void);
910 #define yyparse bar_parse
913 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
914 single compilation unit.
916 *** Exported symbols in C++
918 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
919 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
920 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
924 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
927 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
929 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
930 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
931 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
932 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
933 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
934 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
935 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
937 The following examples compares both:
939 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
940 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
941 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
947 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
948 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
950 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
951 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
952 > # if defined YYDEBUG
954 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
956 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
959 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
963 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
964 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
967 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
968 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
969 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
970 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
975 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
976 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
977 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
980 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
981 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
984 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
986 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
988 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
990 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
994 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
996 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
998 ** glr.c improvements:
1000 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
1002 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
1003 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
1005 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
1007 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
1008 when -std is passed to GCC).
1010 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
1012 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
1013 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
1017 *** C++11 compatibility:
1019 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
1024 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
1025 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
1027 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
1028 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
1030 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
1032 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
1033 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
1034 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
1036 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
1038 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1039 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1041 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1045 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
1046 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
1047 documentation were fixed.
1049 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
1051 ** Changes in the manual:
1053 *** %printer is documented
1055 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
1056 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
1058 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
1059 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
1061 *** Several improvements have been made:
1063 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
1064 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
1065 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
1066 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
1070 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
1072 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
1073 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
1075 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
1077 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
1079 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
1080 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
1082 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
1084 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
1085 halts in the middle of its course.
1087 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
1089 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
1091 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
1092 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
1093 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
1094 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
1095 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
1097 ** Named references:
1099 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
1100 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
1103 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
1104 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
1105 as named references:
1107 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
1108 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
1110 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
1112 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
1113 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
1115 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
1116 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
1117 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
1119 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
1120 will help to stabilize them.
1121 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
1123 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
1125 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
1126 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
1127 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
1128 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
1129 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
1130 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
1131 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
1132 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
1133 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
1135 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
1136 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
1137 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
1138 file with these directives:
1140 %define lr.type lalr
1141 %define lr.type ielr
1142 %define lr.type canonical-lr
1144 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
1145 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
1146 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
1149 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1152 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
1154 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
1156 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
1157 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
1158 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
1159 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
1160 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
1161 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
1162 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
1163 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
1164 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
1165 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
1168 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
1169 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
1170 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
1171 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
1172 inconsistent states.
1174 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
1175 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
1176 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
1177 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
1178 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
1179 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
1180 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
1181 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
1184 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
1185 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
1187 %define parse.lac full
1189 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
1190 details including a few caveats.
1192 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
1195 ** %define improvements:
1197 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
1199 Each of these command-line options
1202 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
1205 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
1207 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
1209 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
1211 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
1212 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
1213 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
1214 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
1216 *** Variables renamed:
1218 The following %define variables
1221 lr.keep_unreachable_states
1223 have been renamed to
1226 lr.keep-unreachable-states
1228 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
1229 for backward compatibility.
1231 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
1233 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
1234 within quotations marks. For example,
1236 %define api.push-pull "push"
1240 %define api.push-pull push
1242 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1244 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1246 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1248 ** Character literals not of length one:
1250 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1251 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1252 the following grammar to be the same token:
1258 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1259 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1261 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1263 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1264 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1265 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1266 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1268 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1270 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1271 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1272 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1273 and "last" members, instead of
1275 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1279 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1280 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1284 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1290 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1294 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1295 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1299 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1303 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1305 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1306 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1307 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1308 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1310 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1312 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1313 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1314 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1315 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1316 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1317 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1318 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1319 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1321 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1323 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1324 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1325 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1326 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1328 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1332 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1334 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1335 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1336 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1337 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1338 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1339 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1340 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1342 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1344 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1345 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1346 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1347 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1348 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1350 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1351 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1352 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1353 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1354 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1355 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1356 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1357 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1358 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1359 shifted or discarded.
1361 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1362 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1363 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1364 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1366 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1367 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1368 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1369 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1370 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1371 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1372 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1373 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1374 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1375 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1376 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1377 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1380 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1382 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1384 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1385 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1387 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1389 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1391 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1393 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1394 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1396 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1398 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1400 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1401 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1402 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1403 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1406 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1407 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1408 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1409 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1411 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1412 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1413 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1414 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1416 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1418 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1419 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1421 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1423 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1425 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1426 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1427 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1428 suppress all warnings:
1432 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1434 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1435 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1436 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1440 This bug has been fixed.
1442 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1444 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1445 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1447 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1450 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1452 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1455 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1456 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1457 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1458 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1460 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1462 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1464 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1465 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1466 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1467 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1470 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1472 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1473 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1474 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1475 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1476 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1477 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1478 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1479 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1480 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1482 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1484 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1485 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1488 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1490 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1494 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1495 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1498 %code requires {CODE}
1499 %code provides {CODE}
1502 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1503 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1504 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1505 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1506 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1508 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1509 is still considered experimental.
1511 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1513 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1514 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1515 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1516 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1517 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1520 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1521 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1522 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1523 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1524 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1525 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1526 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1528 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1530 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1531 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1532 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1533 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1534 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1535 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1536 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1537 be removed altogether.
1539 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1540 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1541 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1542 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1543 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1544 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1545 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1546 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1547 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1548 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1550 ** Internationalization.
1552 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1553 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1556 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1558 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1559 declarations have been fixed.
1561 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1563 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1564 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1566 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1570 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1572 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1573 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1574 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1575 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1576 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1579 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1581 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1583 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1585 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1586 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1587 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1588 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1591 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1593 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1596 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1598 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1601 %define NAME "VALUE"
1603 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1607 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1608 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1612 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1613 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1614 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1615 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1616 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1618 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1619 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1621 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1623 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1624 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1626 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1627 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1628 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1632 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1633 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1634 %skeleton to select it.
1636 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1638 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1639 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1640 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1644 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1645 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1646 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1647 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1649 ** XML Automaton Report
1651 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1652 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1653 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1654 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1656 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1657 %defines. For example:
1661 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1662 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1663 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1664 instead of "unused".
1666 ** Unreachable State Removal
1668 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1669 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1670 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1672 1. Removes unreachable states.
1674 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1675 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1676 directives in existing grammar files.
1678 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1679 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1681 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1683 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1685 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1686 for further discussion.
1688 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1690 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1691 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1692 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1693 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1694 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1695 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1696 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1699 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1702 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1705 %file-prefix "parser"
1709 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1711 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1712 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1713 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1714 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1717 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1718 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1719 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1720 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1722 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1723 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1724 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1725 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1727 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1728 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1730 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1732 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1733 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1736 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1738 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1739 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1741 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1743 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1744 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1745 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1747 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1748 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1750 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1752 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1755 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1756 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1757 declared semantic type tags.
1759 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1760 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1763 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1764 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1765 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1766 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1768 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1769 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1772 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1775 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1776 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1777 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1779 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1780 completely removed from Bison.
1782 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1784 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1785 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1786 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1787 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1788 and is required by POSIX.
1790 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1791 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1793 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1797 %union { char *string; }
1798 %token <string> STRING1
1799 %token <string> STRING2
1800 %type <string> string1
1801 %type <string> string2
1802 %union { char character; }
1803 %token <character> CHR
1804 %type <character> chr
1805 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1806 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1807 %destructor { } <character>
1809 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1810 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1811 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1812 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1813 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1815 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1816 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1819 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1820 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1821 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1822 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1823 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1825 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1826 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1828 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1829 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1830 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1831 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1832 declared after the first %union.
1834 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1835 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1836 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1837 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1838 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1839 after the token definitions.
1841 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1842 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1844 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1845 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1848 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1849 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1850 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1854 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1855 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1856 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1857 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1858 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1861 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1862 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1863 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1864 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1867 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1868 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1869 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1872 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1873 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1874 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1875 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1879 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1880 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1881 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1882 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1883 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1886 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1887 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1889 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1890 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1892 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1893 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1894 in a future release.
1896 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1898 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1899 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1901 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1902 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1904 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1906 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1907 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1908 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1910 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1912 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1914 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1915 their contents together.
1917 ** New warning: unused values
1918 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1919 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1921 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1925 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1926 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1927 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1929 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1930 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1932 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1935 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1936 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1937 values are used, e.g.:
1939 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1940 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1943 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1944 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1946 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1948 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1949 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1951 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1952 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1953 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1954 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1956 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1957 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1958 instead of warnings.
1960 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1961 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1962 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1964 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1966 ** %require "VERSION"
1967 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1968 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1970 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1971 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1972 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1973 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1974 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1976 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1977 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1978 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1979 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1981 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1982 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1984 ** DJGPP support added.
1986 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1988 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1990 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1991 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1992 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1993 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1994 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1995 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1997 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1998 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1999 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
2000 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
2002 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
2003 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
2004 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
2006 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
2007 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
2008 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
2009 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
2010 unexpected "number"'.
2012 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
2014 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
2016 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
2017 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
2018 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
2019 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
2020 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
2022 - Error token location.
2023 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
2024 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
2025 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
2026 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
2028 - Semicolon changes:
2029 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
2030 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
2032 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
2033 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
2034 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
2035 forget a closing quote.
2037 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
2041 - GLR grammars now support locations.
2043 - New directive: %initial-action.
2044 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
2045 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
2047 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
2048 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
2050 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
2051 This is a GNU extension.
2053 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
2054 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
2056 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
2058 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
2059 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
2063 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
2064 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
2065 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
2066 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
2067 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
2068 these violations will become errors again.
2070 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
2071 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
2073 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
2075 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
2077 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
2078 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
2080 ** syntax error processing
2082 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
2083 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
2086 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
2087 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
2090 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
2092 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
2093 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
2095 ** POSIX conformance
2097 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
2098 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
2099 compatibility with Yacc.
2101 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
2102 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
2103 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
2104 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
2107 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
2108 declared before use. C99 requires this.
2110 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
2111 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
2113 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
2114 output as "foo\\bar.y".
2116 - Yacc command and library now available
2117 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
2118 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
2119 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
2120 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
2122 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
2124 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
2125 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
2126 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
2128 ** Other compatibility issues
2130 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
2131 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
2132 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
2133 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
2134 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
2135 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
2137 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
2138 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
2140 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
2141 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
2143 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
2144 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
2145 withdrawn in a future release.
2150 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
2153 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
2154 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
2156 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
2157 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
2158 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
2161 - a single argument only can be added,
2162 - their types are weak (void *),
2163 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
2164 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
2166 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
2169 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
2170 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
2171 %parse-param {int *randomness}
2173 results in the following signatures:
2175 int yylex (int *nastiness);
2176 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2178 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
2180 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
2181 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2183 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
2184 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
2185 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
2187 ** #line in output files
2188 - --no-line works properly.
2190 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
2191 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
2192 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
2193 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
2195 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
2197 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
2199 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
2202 Fix spurious parse errors.
2205 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
2206 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
2209 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
2210 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
2214 but the converse remains an error:
2218 ** Values of mid-rule actions
2221 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
2223 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
2224 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
2226 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
2231 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
2232 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
2233 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
2234 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2236 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
2237 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
2240 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2241 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2242 now creates "bar.c".
2245 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2246 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2248 ** Unknown token numbers
2249 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2253 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2254 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2255 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2256 will be mapped onto another number.
2258 ** Verbose error messages
2259 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2260 error recovery is possible.
2263 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2265 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2266 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2267 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2268 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2269 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2270 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2271 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2272 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2273 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2276 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2279 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2280 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2281 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2282 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2284 ** Explicit initial rule
2285 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2286 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2290 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2291 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2293 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2294 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2296 ** Rules never reduced
2297 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2300 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
2301 On a grammar such as
2303 %token useless useful
2305 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2307 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2308 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2310 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2311 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2313 ** Default locations
2314 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2315 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2316 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2317 the computation of @$.
2319 ** Token end-of-file
2320 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2321 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2322 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2326 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2329 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2332 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2333 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2335 ** Incorrect token definitions
2338 bison used to output
2341 ** Token definitions as enums
2342 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2343 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2344 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2347 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2348 produces additional information:
2350 complete the core item sets with their closure
2351 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2352 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2354 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2355 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2356 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2359 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2360 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2368 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2370 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2373 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2374 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2375 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2377 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2378 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2379 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2380 kludge will be disabled.
2382 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2385 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2387 ** File name clashes are detected
2388 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2389 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2391 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2392 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2393 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2394 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2395 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2396 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2398 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2399 many portability hassles.
2401 ** DJGPP support added.
2403 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2405 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2408 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2409 under some conditions.
2414 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2416 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2418 ** Portability fixes
2420 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2422 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2426 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2427 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2428 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2429 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2430 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2432 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2433 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2434 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2436 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2439 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2441 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2442 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2445 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2446 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2447 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2449 ** Better C++ compliance
2450 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2451 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2454 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2457 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2460 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2463 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2466 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2468 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2470 ** Swedish translation
2473 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2474 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2475 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2477 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2478 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2479 previous allocations were not freed.
2481 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2482 Some newlines were missing.
2483 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2485 ** Fixed conflict report.
2486 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2490 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2492 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2494 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2496 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2498 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2499 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2501 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2503 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2507 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2509 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2511 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2512 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2515 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2518 ** Portability fixes.
2520 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2522 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2523 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2524 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2525 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2527 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2529 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2531 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2533 ** Russian translation added.
2535 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2537 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2539 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2541 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2543 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2545 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2546 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2549 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2550 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2553 Automatic location tracking.
2555 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2557 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2561 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2563 ** There is now a FAQ.
2565 * Changes in version 1.27:
2567 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2568 some systems has been fixed.
2570 * Changes in version 1.26:
2572 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2574 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2576 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2578 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2580 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2582 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2584 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2585 not provide alloca().
2587 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2589 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2590 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2592 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2593 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2594 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2596 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2597 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2598 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2601 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2602 directives in the parser file.
2604 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2605 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2607 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2608 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2609 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2610 a switch statement body.
2612 * Changes in version 1.23:
2614 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2615 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2616 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2617 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2619 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2621 * Changes in version 1.22:
2623 --help option added.
2625 * Changes in version 1.20:
2627 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2631 Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2633 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2635 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2636 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2637 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2638 (at your option) any later version.
2640 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2641 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2642 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2643 GNU General Public License for more details.
2645 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2646 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2648 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2649 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2650 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2651 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2652 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2653 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2654 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2655 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2656 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2657 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2658 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2659 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2660 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2661 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2662 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2663 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2664 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2665 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2666 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts parsers yystackp yyval yynerrs
2667 LocalWords: Théophile Ranquet Santet fno fnone stype associativity Tolmer
2668 LocalWords: Wprecedence Rassoul Wempty Paolo Bonzini parser's Michiel loc
2669 LocalWords: redeclaration sval fcaret reentrant XSLT xsl Wmaybe yyvsp Tedi
2670 LocalWords: pragmas noreturn untyped Rozenman unexpanded Wojciech Polak
2671 LocalWords: Alexandre MERCHANTABILITY yytype