3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
5 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
7 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
8 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
9 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
11 ** Backward incompatible changes
15 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
17 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
18 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
20 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
21 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
23 Missing semicolons at the end of actions are no longer added (as announced
26 *** Use of YACC='bison -y'
28 TL;DR: With Autoconf <= 2.69, pass -Wno-yacc to (AM_)YFLAGS if you use
31 Traditional Yacc generates 'y.tab.c' whatever the name of the input file.
32 Therefore Makefiles written for Yacc expect 'y.tab.c' (and possibly
33 'y.tab.h' and 'y.outout') to be generated from 'foo.y'.
35 To this end, for ages, AC_PROG_YACC, Autoconf's macro to look for an
36 implementation of Yacc, was using Bison as 'bison -y'. While it does
37 ensure compatible output file names, it also enables warnings for
38 incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc. In other words, 'bison -y' triggers
39 warnings for Bison extensions.
41 Autoconf 2.70+ fixes this incompatibility by using YACC='bison -o y.tab.c'
42 (which also generates 'y.tab.h' and 'y.output' when needed).
43 Alternatively, disable Yacc warnings by passing '-Wno-yacc' to your Yacc
44 flags (YFLAGS, or AM_YFLAGS with Automake).
48 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
50 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
51 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
52 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
53 preprocessor expansion:
55 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
57 This is fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
58 identifiers for user-provided variables.
60 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
62 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
63 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
65 *** Warnings about useless %pure-parser/%define api.pure are restored
67 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
69 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
74 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
75 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
76 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
78 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
79 the caret information only. For instance on:
86 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
87 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
91 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
92 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
96 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
98 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
99 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
101 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
103 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
104 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
105 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
107 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
108 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
109 errors (and only those):
111 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
113 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
114 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
116 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
118 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
120 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
121 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
123 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
124 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
125 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
127 *** The display of warnings is now richer
129 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
131 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
133 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
134 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
135 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
137 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
140 bison: warnings being treated as errors
141 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
145 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
147 *** Deprecated constructs
149 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
150 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
151 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
153 *** Useless semantic types
155 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
156 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
157 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
158 types that trigger the warning:
162 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
163 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
165 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
167 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
168 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
170 *** Undefined but unused symbols
172 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
173 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
176 %destructor {} symbol2
181 *** Useless destructors or printers
183 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
184 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
185 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
186 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
188 %token <type1> token1
192 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
193 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
197 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
198 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
202 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
204 compare the previous version of bison:
207 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
208 $ bison -Werror foo.y
209 bison: warnings being treated as errors
210 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
212 with the new behavior:
215 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
216 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
217 $ bison -Werror foo.y
218 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
219 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
221 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
226 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
231 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
232 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
233 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
238 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
239 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
241 ** Incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc
243 The 'yacc' category is no longer part of '-Wall', enable it explicitly
246 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
248 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
249 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
250 or more arguments. Instead of
252 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
253 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
254 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
255 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
259 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
261 ** Types of values for %define variables
263 Bison used to make no difference between '%define foo bar' and '%define
264 foo "bar"'. The former is now called a 'keyword value', and the latter a
265 'string value'. A third kind was added: 'code values', such as '%define
268 Keyword variables are used for fixed value sets, e.g.,
272 Code variables are used for value in the target language, e.g.,
274 %define api.value.type {struct semantic_type}
276 String variables are used remaining cases, e.g. file names.
278 ** Variable api.token.prefix
280 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
281 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
282 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
284 %token FILE for ERROR
285 %define api.token.prefix {TOK_}
287 start: FILE for ERROR;
289 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
290 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
291 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
292 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
294 ** Variable api.value.type
296 This new %define variable supersedes the #define macro YYSTYPE. The use
297 of YYSTYPE is discouraged. In particular, #defining YYSTYPE *and* either
298 using %union or %defining api.value.type results in undefined behavior.
300 Either define api.value.type, or use "%union":
307 %token <ival> INT "integer"
308 %token <sval> STRING "string"
309 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <ival>
310 %destructor { free ($$); } <sval>
313 yylval.ival = 42; return INT;
314 yylval.sval = "42"; return STRING;
316 The %define variable api.value.type supports both keyword and code values.
318 The keyword value 'union' means that the user provides genuine types, not
319 union member names such as "ival" and "sval" above (WARNING: will fail if
320 -y/--yacc/%yacc is enabled).
322 %define api.value.type union
323 %token <int> INT "integer"
324 %token <char *> STRING "string"
325 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <int>
326 %destructor { free ($$); } <char *>
329 yylval.INT = 42; return INT;
330 yylval.STRING = "42"; return STRING;
332 The keyword value variant is somewhat equivalent, but for C++ special
333 provision is made to allow classes to be used (more about this below).
335 %define api.value.type variant
336 %token <int> INT "integer"
337 %token <std::string> STRING "string"
339 Code values (in braces) denote user defined types. This is where YYSTYPE
357 %define api.value.type {struct my_value}
358 %token <u.ival> INT "integer"
359 %token <u.sval> STRING "string"
360 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <u.ival>
361 %destructor { free ($$); } <u.sval>
364 yylval.u.ival = 42; return INT;
365 yylval.u.sval = "42"; return STRING;
367 ** Variable parse.error
369 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
370 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
373 ** Renamed %define variables
375 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
376 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
378 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
379 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
380 namespace -> api.namespace
381 stype -> api.value.type
383 ** Semantic predicates
385 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
387 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
388 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
389 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
390 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
391 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
394 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
396 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
397 reduce/reduce conflicts.
399 ** Tokens are numbered in their order of appearance
401 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
403 With '%token A B', A had a number less than the one of B. However,
404 precedence declarations used to generate a reversed order. This is now
405 fixed, and introducing tokens with any of %token, %left, %right,
406 %precedence, or %nonassoc yields the same result.
408 When mixing declarations of tokens with a litteral character (e.g., 'a')
409 or with an identifier (e.g., B) in a precedence declaration, Bison
410 numbered the litteral characters first. For example
414 would lead to the tokens declared in this order: 'c' 'd' A B. Again, the
415 input order is now preserved.
417 These changes were made so that one can remove useless precedence and
418 associativity declarations (i.e., map %nonassoc, %left or %right to
419 %precedence, or to %token) and get exactly the same output.
421 ** Useless precedence and associativity
423 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
425 When developing and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
426 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
427 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
428 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
429 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
430 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
431 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
433 *** Precedence warning category
435 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
436 useless precedence and associativity directives.
438 *** Useless associativity
440 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
441 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
442 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
443 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
457 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
461 *** Useless precedence
463 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
464 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
465 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
466 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
470 exp: "var" '=' "number";
474 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
478 *** Useless precedence and associativity
480 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
485 exp: "var" '=' "number";
489 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
495 With help from Joel E. Denny and Gabriel Rassoul.
497 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
498 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
499 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
500 %empty. On the following grammar:
510 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
513 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
517 ** Java skeleton improvements
519 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
521 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
522 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
523 and "%define init_throws".
525 ** C++ skeletons improvements
527 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
529 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
530 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
531 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
533 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
535 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
537 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
539 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
540 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
541 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
542 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
543 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
544 factory invoked by the user actions).
546 *** %define api.value.type variant
548 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
549 from Théophile Ranquet.
551 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
554 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
557 %type <::std::string> item;
558 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
561 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
565 %empty { /* Generates an empty string list. */ }
566 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
570 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
571 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
574 *** %define api.token.constructor
576 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
577 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
578 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
580 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
582 parser::location_type loc = ...;
584 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
586 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
588 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
594 There are operator- and operator-= for 'location'. Negative line/column
595 increments can no longer underflow the resulting value.
597 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7.1 (2013-04-15) [stable]
601 *** Fix compiler attribute portability (yacc.c)
603 With locations enabled, __attribute__ was used unprotected.
605 *** Fix some compiler warnings (lalr1.cc)
607 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
611 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
613 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
615 ** Diagnostics are improved
617 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
619 *** Changes in the format of error messages
621 This used to be the format of many error reports:
623 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
624 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
628 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
629 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
631 *** New format for error reports: carets
633 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
635 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
638 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
644 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
645 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
647 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
648 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
650 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
651 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
653 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
654 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
657 The default behavior for now is still not to display these unless
658 explicitly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
659 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
662 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
664 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
665 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
666 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
667 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
668 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
671 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
672 "%define api.pure full".
674 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
676 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
677 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
678 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
679 then responsible to define her type.
681 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
682 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
685 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
686 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
689 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
690 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
693 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
695 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
696 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
697 before re-throwing the exception.
699 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
702 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
704 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
706 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
707 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
708 numbered and left-justified.
710 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
711 diamond shaped nodes.
713 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
714 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
716 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
718 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
719 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
723 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
724 have been fixed and extended.
726 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
727 were not properly documented.
729 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
731 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
733 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
734 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
735 reporting them to us.
739 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
740 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
743 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
745 Null characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
747 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
748 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
750 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
752 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
754 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
758 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
760 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
761 users to the appropriate place to report them.
763 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
765 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
766 generated, are removed.
768 All the generated headers are self-contained.
770 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
772 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
773 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
774 For instance the header generated from
776 %define api.prefix "calc"
777 %defines "lib/parse.h"
779 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
781 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
783 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
786 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
787 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
788 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
792 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
794 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
795 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
798 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
802 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
803 suite have been fixed.
805 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
807 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
808 invalid C++. This is fixed.
810 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
812 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
814 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
816 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
820 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
821 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
822 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
824 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
828 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
832 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
834 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
836 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
838 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
839 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
842 ** Type names in actions
844 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
845 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
847 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
849 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
850 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
852 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
856 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
857 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
861 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
862 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
865 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
867 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
870 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
871 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
873 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
876 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
878 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
879 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
880 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
881 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
884 ** Generated Parser Headers
886 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
888 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
889 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
894 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
896 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
898 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
899 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
901 int bar_parse (void);
905 #define yyparse bar_parse
908 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
909 single compilation unit.
911 *** Exported symbols in C++
913 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
914 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
915 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
919 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
922 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
924 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
925 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
926 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
927 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
928 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
929 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
930 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
932 The following examples compares both:
934 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
935 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
936 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
942 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
943 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
945 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
946 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
947 > # if defined YYDEBUG
949 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
951 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
954 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
958 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
959 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
962 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
963 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
964 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
965 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
970 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
971 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
972 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
975 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
976 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
979 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
981 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
983 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
985 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
989 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
991 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
993 ** glr.c improvements:
995 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
997 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
998 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
1000 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
1002 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
1003 when -std is passed to GCC).
1005 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
1007 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
1008 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
1012 *** C++11 compatibility:
1014 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
1019 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
1020 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
1022 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
1023 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
1025 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
1027 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
1028 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
1029 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
1031 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
1033 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1034 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1036 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1040 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
1041 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
1042 documentation were fixed.
1044 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
1046 ** Changes in the manual:
1048 *** %printer is documented
1050 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
1051 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
1053 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
1054 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
1056 *** Several improvements have been made:
1058 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
1059 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
1060 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
1061 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
1065 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
1067 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
1068 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
1070 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
1072 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
1074 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
1075 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
1077 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
1079 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
1080 halts in the middle of its course.
1082 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
1084 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
1086 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
1087 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
1088 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
1089 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
1090 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
1092 ** Named references:
1094 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
1095 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
1098 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
1099 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
1100 as named references:
1102 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
1103 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
1105 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
1107 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
1108 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
1110 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
1111 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
1112 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
1114 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
1115 will help to stabilize them.
1116 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
1118 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
1120 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
1121 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
1122 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
1123 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
1124 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
1125 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
1126 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
1127 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
1128 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
1130 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
1131 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
1132 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
1133 file with these directives:
1135 %define lr.type lalr
1136 %define lr.type ielr
1137 %define lr.type canonical-lr
1139 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
1140 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
1141 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
1144 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1147 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
1149 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
1151 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
1152 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
1153 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
1154 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
1155 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
1156 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
1157 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
1158 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
1159 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
1160 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
1163 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
1164 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
1165 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
1166 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
1167 inconsistent states.
1169 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
1170 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
1171 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
1172 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
1173 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
1174 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
1175 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
1176 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
1179 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
1180 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
1182 %define parse.lac full
1184 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
1185 details including a few caveats.
1187 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
1190 ** %define improvements:
1192 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
1194 Each of these command-line options
1197 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
1200 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
1202 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
1204 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
1206 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
1207 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
1208 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
1209 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
1211 *** Variables renamed:
1213 The following %define variables
1216 lr.keep_unreachable_states
1218 have been renamed to
1221 lr.keep-unreachable-states
1223 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
1224 for backward compatibility.
1226 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
1228 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
1229 within quotations marks. For example,
1231 %define api.push-pull "push"
1235 %define api.push-pull push
1237 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1239 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1241 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1243 ** Character literals not of length one:
1245 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1246 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1247 the following grammar to be the same token:
1253 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1254 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1256 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1258 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1259 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1260 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1261 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1263 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1265 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1266 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1267 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1268 and "last" members, instead of
1270 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1274 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1275 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1279 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1285 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1289 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1290 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1294 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1298 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1300 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1301 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1302 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1303 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1305 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1307 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1308 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1309 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1310 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1311 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1312 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1313 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1314 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1316 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1318 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1319 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1320 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1321 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1323 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1327 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1329 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1330 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1331 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1332 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1333 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1334 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1335 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1337 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1339 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1340 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1341 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1342 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1343 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1345 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1346 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1347 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1348 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1349 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1350 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1351 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1352 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1353 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1354 shifted or discarded.
1356 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1357 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1358 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1359 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1361 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1362 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1363 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1364 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1365 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1366 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1367 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1368 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1369 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1370 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1371 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1372 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1375 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1377 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1379 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1380 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1382 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1384 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1386 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1388 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1389 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1391 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1393 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1395 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1396 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1397 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1398 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1401 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1402 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1403 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1404 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1406 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1407 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1408 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1409 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1411 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1413 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1414 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1416 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1418 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1420 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1421 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1422 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1423 suppress all warnings:
1427 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1429 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1430 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1431 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1435 This bug has been fixed.
1437 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1439 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1440 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1442 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1445 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1447 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1450 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1451 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1452 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1453 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1455 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1457 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1459 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1460 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1461 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1462 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1465 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1467 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1468 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1469 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1470 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1471 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1472 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1473 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1474 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1475 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1477 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1479 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1480 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1483 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1485 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1489 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1490 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1493 %code requires {CODE}
1494 %code provides {CODE}
1497 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1498 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1499 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1500 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1501 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1503 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1504 is still considered experimental.
1506 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1508 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1509 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1510 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1511 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1512 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1515 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1516 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1517 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1518 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1519 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1520 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1521 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1523 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1525 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1526 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1527 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1528 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1529 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1530 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1531 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1532 be removed altogether.
1534 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1535 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1536 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1537 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1538 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1539 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1540 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1541 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1542 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1543 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1545 ** Internationalization.
1547 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1548 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1551 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1553 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1554 declarations have been fixed.
1556 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1558 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1559 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1561 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1565 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1567 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1568 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1569 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1570 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1571 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1574 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1576 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1578 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1580 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1581 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1582 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1583 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1586 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1588 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1591 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1593 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1596 %define NAME "VALUE"
1598 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1602 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1603 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1607 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1608 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1609 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1610 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1611 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1613 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1614 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1616 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1618 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1619 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1621 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1622 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1623 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1627 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1628 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1629 %skeleton to select it.
1631 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1633 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1634 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1635 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1639 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1640 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1641 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1642 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1644 ** XML Automaton Report
1646 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1647 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1648 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1649 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1651 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1652 %defines. For example:
1656 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1657 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1658 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1659 instead of "unused".
1661 ** Unreachable State Removal
1663 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1664 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1665 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1667 1. Removes unreachable states.
1669 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1670 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1671 directives in existing grammar files.
1673 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1674 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1676 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1678 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1680 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1681 for further discussion.
1683 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1685 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1686 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1687 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1688 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1689 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1690 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1691 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1694 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1697 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1700 %file-prefix "parser"
1704 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1706 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1707 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1708 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1709 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1712 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1713 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1714 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1715 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1717 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1718 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1719 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1720 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1722 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1723 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1725 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1727 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1728 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1731 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1733 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1734 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1736 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1738 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1739 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1740 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1742 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1743 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1745 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1747 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1750 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1751 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1752 declared semantic type tags.
1754 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1755 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1758 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1759 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1760 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1761 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1763 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1764 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1767 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1770 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1771 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1772 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1774 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1775 completely removed from Bison.
1777 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1779 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1780 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1781 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1782 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1783 and is required by POSIX.
1785 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1786 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1788 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1792 %union { char *string; }
1793 %token <string> STRING1
1794 %token <string> STRING2
1795 %type <string> string1
1796 %type <string> string2
1797 %union { char character; }
1798 %token <character> CHR
1799 %type <character> chr
1800 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1801 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1802 %destructor { } <character>
1804 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1805 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1806 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1807 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1808 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1810 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1811 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1814 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1815 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1816 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1817 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1818 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1820 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1821 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1823 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1824 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1825 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1826 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1827 declared after the first %union.
1829 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1830 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1831 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1832 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1833 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1834 after the token definitions.
1836 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1837 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1839 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1840 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1843 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1844 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1845 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1849 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1850 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1851 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1852 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1853 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1856 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1857 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1858 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1859 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1862 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1863 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1864 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1867 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1868 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1869 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1870 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1874 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1875 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1876 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1877 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1878 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1881 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1882 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1884 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1885 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1887 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1888 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1889 in a future release.
1891 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1893 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1894 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1896 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1897 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1899 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1901 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1902 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1903 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1905 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1907 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1909 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1910 their contents together.
1912 ** New warning: unused values
1913 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1914 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1916 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1920 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1921 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1922 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1924 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1925 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1927 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1930 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1931 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1932 values are used, e.g.:
1934 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1935 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1938 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1939 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1941 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1943 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1944 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1946 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1947 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1948 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1949 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1951 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1952 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1953 instead of warnings.
1955 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1956 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1957 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1959 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1961 ** %require "VERSION"
1962 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1963 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1965 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1966 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1967 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1968 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1969 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1971 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1972 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1973 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1974 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1976 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1977 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1979 ** DJGPP support added.
1981 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1983 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1985 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1986 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1987 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1988 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1989 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1990 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1992 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1993 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1994 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1995 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1997 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1998 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1999 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
2001 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
2002 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
2003 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
2004 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
2005 unexpected "number"'.
2007 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
2009 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
2011 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
2012 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
2013 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
2014 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
2015 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
2017 - Error token location.
2018 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
2019 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
2020 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
2021 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
2023 - Semicolon changes:
2024 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
2025 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
2027 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
2028 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
2029 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
2030 forget a closing quote.
2032 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
2036 - GLR grammars now support locations.
2038 - New directive: %initial-action.
2039 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
2040 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
2042 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
2043 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
2045 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
2046 This is a GNU extension.
2048 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
2049 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
2051 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
2053 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
2054 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
2058 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
2059 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
2060 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
2061 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
2062 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
2063 these violations will become errors again.
2065 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
2066 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
2068 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
2070 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
2072 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
2073 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
2075 ** syntax error processing
2077 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
2078 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
2081 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
2082 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
2085 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
2087 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
2088 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
2090 ** POSIX conformance
2092 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
2093 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
2094 compatibility with Yacc.
2096 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
2097 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
2098 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
2099 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
2102 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
2103 declared before use. C99 requires this.
2105 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
2106 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
2108 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
2109 output as "foo\\bar.y".
2111 - Yacc command and library now available
2112 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
2113 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
2114 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
2115 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
2117 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
2119 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
2120 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
2121 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
2123 ** Other compatibility issues
2125 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
2126 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
2127 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
2128 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
2129 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
2130 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
2132 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
2133 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
2135 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
2136 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
2138 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
2139 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
2140 withdrawn in a future release.
2145 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
2148 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
2149 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
2151 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
2152 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
2153 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
2156 - a single argument only can be added,
2157 - their types are weak (void *),
2158 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
2159 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
2161 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
2164 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
2165 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
2166 %parse-param {int *randomness}
2168 results in the following signatures:
2170 int yylex (int *nastiness);
2171 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2173 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
2175 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
2176 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2178 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
2179 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
2180 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
2182 ** #line in output files
2183 - --no-line works properly.
2185 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
2186 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
2187 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
2188 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
2190 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
2192 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
2194 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
2197 Fix spurious parse errors.
2200 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
2201 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
2204 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
2205 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
2209 but the converse remains an error:
2213 ** Values of mid-rule actions
2216 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
2218 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
2219 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
2221 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
2226 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
2227 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
2228 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
2229 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2231 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
2232 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
2235 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2236 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2237 now creates "bar.c".
2240 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2241 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2243 ** Unknown token numbers
2244 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2248 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2249 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2250 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2251 will be mapped onto another number.
2253 ** Verbose error messages
2254 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2255 error recovery is possible.
2258 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2260 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2261 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2262 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2263 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2264 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2265 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2266 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2267 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2268 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2271 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2274 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2275 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2276 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2277 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2279 ** Explicit initial rule
2280 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2281 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2285 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2286 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2288 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2289 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2291 ** Rules never reduced
2292 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2295 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
2296 On a grammar such as
2298 %token useless useful
2300 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2302 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2303 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2305 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2306 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2308 ** Default locations
2309 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2310 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2311 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2312 the computation of @$.
2314 ** Token end-of-file
2315 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2316 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2317 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2321 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2324 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2327 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2328 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2330 ** Incorrect token definitions
2333 bison used to output
2336 ** Token definitions as enums
2337 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2338 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2339 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2342 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2343 produces additional information:
2345 complete the core item sets with their closure
2346 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2347 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2349 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2350 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2351 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2354 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2355 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2363 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2365 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2368 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2369 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2370 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2372 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2373 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2374 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2375 kludge will be disabled.
2377 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2380 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2382 ** File name clashes are detected
2383 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2384 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2386 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2387 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2388 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2389 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2390 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2391 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2393 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2394 many portability hassles.
2396 ** DJGPP support added.
2398 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2400 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2403 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2404 under some conditions.
2409 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2411 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2413 ** Portability fixes
2415 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2417 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2421 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2422 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2423 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2424 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2425 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2427 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2428 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2429 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2431 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2434 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2436 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2437 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2440 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2441 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2442 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2444 ** Better C++ compliance
2445 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2446 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2449 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2452 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2455 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2458 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2461 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2463 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2465 ** Swedish translation
2468 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2469 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2470 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2472 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2473 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2474 previous allocations were not freed.
2476 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2477 Some newlines were missing.
2478 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2480 ** Fixed conflict report.
2481 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2485 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2487 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2489 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2491 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2493 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2494 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2496 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2498 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2502 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2504 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2506 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2507 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2510 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2513 ** Portability fixes.
2515 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2517 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2518 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2519 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2520 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2522 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2524 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2526 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2528 ** Russian translation added.
2530 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2532 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2534 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2536 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2538 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2540 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2541 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2544 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2545 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2548 Automatic location tracking.
2550 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2552 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2556 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2558 ** There is now a FAQ.
2560 * Changes in version 1.27:
2562 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2563 some systems has been fixed.
2565 * Changes in version 1.26:
2567 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2569 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2571 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2573 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2575 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2577 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2579 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2580 not provide alloca().
2582 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2584 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2585 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2587 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2588 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2589 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2591 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2592 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2593 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2596 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2597 directives in the parser file.
2599 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2600 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2602 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2603 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2604 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2605 a switch statement body.
2607 * Changes in version 1.23:
2609 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2610 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2611 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2612 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2614 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2616 * Changes in version 1.22:
2618 --help option added.
2620 * Changes in version 1.20:
2622 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2626 Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2628 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2630 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2631 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2632 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2633 (at your option) any later version.
2635 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2636 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2637 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2638 GNU General Public License for more details.
2640 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2641 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2643 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2644 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2645 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2646 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2647 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2648 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2649 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2650 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2651 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2652 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2653 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2654 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2655 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2656 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2657 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2658 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2659 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2660 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2661 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts parsers yystackp yyval yynerrs
2662 LocalWords: Théophile Ranquet Santet fno fnone stype associativity Tolmer
2663 LocalWords: Wprecedence Rassoul Wempty Paolo Bonzini parser's Michiel loc
2664 LocalWords: redeclaration sval fcaret reentrant XSLT xsl Wmaybe yyvsp Tedi
2665 LocalWords: pragmas noreturn untyped Rozenman unexpanded Wojciech Polak
2666 LocalWords: Alexandre MERCHANTABILITY yytype