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