3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 *** %empty is used in reports
9 Empty right-hand sides are denoted by '%empty' in all the reports (text,
10 dot, XML and formats derived from it).
12 *** YYERROR and variants
14 When C++ variant support is enabled, an error triggered via YYERROR, but
15 not caught via error recovery, resulted in a double deletion.
17 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.1 (2013-11-12) [stable]
21 *** Errors in caret diagnostics
23 On some platforms, some errors could result in endless diagnostics.
25 *** Fixes of the -Werror option
27 Options such as "-Werror -Wno-error=foo" were still turning "foo"
28 diagnostics into errors instead of warnings. This is fixed.
30 Actually, for consistency with GCC, "-Wno-error=foo -Werror" now also
31 leaves "foo" diagnostics as warnings. Similarly, with "-Werror=foo
32 -Wno-error", "foo" diagnostics are now errors.
36 As demonstrated in the documentation, one can now leave spaces between
41 The yacc.1 man page is no longer installed if --disable-yacc was
44 *** Fixes in the test suite
46 Bugs and portability issues.
48 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0 (2013-07-25) [stable]
50 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
52 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
53 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
54 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
56 ** Backward incompatible changes
60 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
62 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
63 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
65 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
66 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
68 Missing semicolons at the end of actions are no longer added (as announced
71 *** Use of YACC='bison -y'
73 TL;DR: With Autoconf <= 2.69, pass -Wno-yacc to (AM_)YFLAGS if you use
76 Traditional Yacc generates 'y.tab.c' whatever the name of the input file.
77 Therefore Makefiles written for Yacc expect 'y.tab.c' (and possibly
78 'y.tab.h' and 'y.outout') to be generated from 'foo.y'.
80 To this end, for ages, AC_PROG_YACC, Autoconf's macro to look for an
81 implementation of Yacc, was using Bison as 'bison -y'. While it does
82 ensure compatible output file names, it also enables warnings for
83 incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc. In other words, 'bison -y' triggers
84 warnings for Bison extensions.
86 Autoconf 2.70+ fixes this incompatibility by using YACC='bison -o y.tab.c'
87 (which also generates 'y.tab.h' and 'y.output' when needed).
88 Alternatively, disable Yacc warnings by passing '-Wno-yacc' to your Yacc
89 flags (YFLAGS, or AM_YFLAGS with Automake).
93 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
95 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
96 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
97 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
98 preprocessor expansion:
100 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
102 This is fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
103 identifiers for user-provided variables.
105 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
107 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
108 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
110 *** Warnings about useless %pure-parser/%define api.pure are restored
112 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
114 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
119 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
120 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
121 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
123 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
124 the caret information only. For instance on:
131 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
132 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
136 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
137 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
141 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
143 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
144 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
146 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
148 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
149 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
150 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
152 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
153 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
154 errors (and only those):
156 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
158 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
159 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
161 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
163 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
165 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
166 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
168 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
169 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
170 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
172 *** The display of warnings is now richer
174 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
176 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
178 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
179 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
180 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
182 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
185 bison: warnings being treated as errors
186 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
190 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
192 *** Deprecated constructs
194 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
195 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
196 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
198 *** Useless semantic types
200 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
201 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
202 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
203 types that trigger the warning:
207 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
208 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
210 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
212 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
213 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
215 *** Undefined but unused symbols
217 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
218 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
221 %destructor {} symbol2
226 *** Useless destructors or printers
228 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
229 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
230 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
231 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
233 %token <type1> token1
237 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
238 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
242 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
243 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
247 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
249 compare the previous version of bison:
252 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
253 $ bison -Werror foo.y
254 bison: warnings being treated as errors
255 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
257 with the new behavior:
260 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
261 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
262 $ bison -Werror foo.y
263 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
264 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
266 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
271 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
276 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
277 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
278 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
283 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
284 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
286 ** Incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc
288 The 'yacc' category is no longer part of '-Wall', enable it explicitly
291 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
293 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
294 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
295 or more arguments. Instead of
297 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
298 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
299 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
300 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
304 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
306 ** Types of values for %define variables
308 Bison used to make no difference between '%define foo bar' and '%define
309 foo "bar"'. The former is now called a 'keyword value', and the latter a
310 'string value'. A third kind was added: 'code values', such as '%define
313 Keyword variables are used for fixed value sets, e.g.,
317 Code variables are used for value in the target language, e.g.,
319 %define api.value.type {struct semantic_type}
321 String variables are used remaining cases, e.g. file names.
323 ** Variable api.token.prefix
325 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
326 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
327 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
329 %token FILE for ERROR
330 %define api.token.prefix {TOK_}
332 start: FILE for ERROR;
334 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
335 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
336 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
337 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
339 ** Variable api.value.type
341 This new %define variable supersedes the #define macro YYSTYPE. The use
342 of YYSTYPE is discouraged. In particular, #defining YYSTYPE *and* either
343 using %union or %defining api.value.type results in undefined behavior.
345 Either define api.value.type, or use "%union":
352 %token <ival> INT "integer"
353 %token <sval> STRING "string"
354 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <ival>
355 %destructor { free ($$); } <sval>
358 yylval.ival = 42; return INT;
359 yylval.sval = "42"; return STRING;
361 The %define variable api.value.type supports both keyword and code values.
363 The keyword value 'union' means that the user provides genuine types, not
364 union member names such as "ival" and "sval" above (WARNING: will fail if
365 -y/--yacc/%yacc is enabled).
367 %define api.value.type union
368 %token <int> INT "integer"
369 %token <char *> STRING "string"
370 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <int>
371 %destructor { free ($$); } <char *>
374 yylval.INT = 42; return INT;
375 yylval.STRING = "42"; return STRING;
377 The keyword value variant is somewhat equivalent, but for C++ special
378 provision is made to allow classes to be used (more about this below).
380 %define api.value.type variant
381 %token <int> INT "integer"
382 %token <std::string> STRING "string"
384 Code values (in braces) denote user defined types. This is where YYSTYPE
402 %define api.value.type {struct my_value}
403 %token <u.ival> INT "integer"
404 %token <u.sval> STRING "string"
405 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <u.ival>
406 %destructor { free ($$); } <u.sval>
409 yylval.u.ival = 42; return INT;
410 yylval.u.sval = "42"; return STRING;
412 ** Variable parse.error
414 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
415 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
418 ** Renamed %define variables
420 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
421 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
423 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
424 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
425 namespace -> api.namespace
426 stype -> api.value.type
428 ** Semantic predicates
430 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
432 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
433 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
434 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
435 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
436 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
439 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
441 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
442 reduce/reduce conflicts.
444 ** Tokens are numbered in their order of appearance
446 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
448 With '%token A B', A had a number less than the one of B. However,
449 precedence declarations used to generate a reversed order. This is now
450 fixed, and introducing tokens with any of %token, %left, %right,
451 %precedence, or %nonassoc yields the same result.
453 When mixing declarations of tokens with a litteral character (e.g., 'a')
454 or with an identifier (e.g., B) in a precedence declaration, Bison
455 numbered the litteral characters first. For example
459 would lead to the tokens declared in this order: 'c' 'd' A B. Again, the
460 input order is now preserved.
462 These changes were made so that one can remove useless precedence and
463 associativity declarations (i.e., map %nonassoc, %left or %right to
464 %precedence, or to %token) and get exactly the same output.
466 ** Useless precedence and associativity
468 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
470 When developing and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
471 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
472 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
473 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
474 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
475 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
476 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
478 *** Precedence warning category
480 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
481 useless precedence and associativity directives.
483 *** Useless associativity
485 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
486 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
487 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
488 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
502 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
506 *** Useless precedence
508 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
509 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
510 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
511 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
515 exp: "var" '=' "number";
519 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
523 *** Useless precedence and associativity
525 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
530 exp: "var" '=' "number";
534 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
540 With help from Joel E. Denny and Gabriel Rassoul.
542 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
543 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
544 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
545 %empty. On the following grammar:
555 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
558 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
562 ** Java skeleton improvements
564 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
565 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
566 and "%define init_throws".
567 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
569 The Java skeleton now supports push parsing.
570 Contributed by Dennis Heimbigner.
572 ** C++ skeletons improvements
574 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
576 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
577 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
578 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
580 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
582 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
584 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
586 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
587 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
588 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
589 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
590 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
591 factory invoked by the user actions).
593 *** %define api.value.type variant
595 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
596 from Théophile Ranquet.
598 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
601 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
604 %type <::std::string> item;
605 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
608 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
612 %empty { /* Generates an empty string list. */ }
613 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
617 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
618 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
621 *** %define api.token.constructor
623 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
624 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
625 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
627 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
629 parser::location_type loc = ...;
631 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
633 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
635 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
641 There are operator- and operator-= for 'location'. Negative line/column
642 increments can no longer underflow the resulting value.
644 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7.1 (2013-04-15) [stable]
648 *** Fix compiler attribute portability (yacc.c)
650 With locations enabled, __attribute__ was used unprotected.
652 *** Fix some compiler warnings (lalr1.cc)
654 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
658 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
660 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
662 ** Diagnostics are improved
664 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
666 *** Changes in the format of error messages
668 This used to be the format of many error reports:
670 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
671 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
675 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
676 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
678 *** New format for error reports: carets
680 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
682 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
685 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
691 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
692 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
694 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
695 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
697 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
698 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
700 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
701 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
704 The default behavior for now is still not to display these unless
705 explicitly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
706 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
709 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
711 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
712 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
713 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
714 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
715 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
718 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
719 "%define api.pure full".
721 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
723 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
724 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
725 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
726 then responsible to define her type.
728 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
729 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
732 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
733 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
736 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
737 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
740 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
742 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
743 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
744 before re-throwing the exception.
746 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
749 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
751 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
753 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
754 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
755 numbered and left-justified.
757 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
758 diamond shaped nodes.
760 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
761 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
763 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
765 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
766 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
770 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
771 have been fixed and extended.
773 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
774 were not properly documented.
776 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
778 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
780 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
781 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
782 reporting them to us.
786 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
787 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
790 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
792 Null characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
794 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
795 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
797 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
799 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
801 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
805 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
807 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
808 users to the appropriate place to report them.
810 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
812 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
813 generated, are removed.
815 All the generated headers are self-contained.
817 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
819 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
820 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
821 For instance the header generated from
823 %define api.prefix "calc"
824 %defines "lib/parse.h"
826 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
828 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
830 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
833 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
834 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
835 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
839 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
841 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
842 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
845 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
849 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
850 suite have been fixed.
852 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
854 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
855 invalid C++. This is fixed.
857 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
859 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
861 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
863 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
867 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
868 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
869 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
871 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
875 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
879 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
881 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
883 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
885 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
886 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
889 ** Type names in actions
891 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
892 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
894 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
896 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
897 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
899 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
903 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
904 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
908 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
909 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
912 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
914 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
917 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
918 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
920 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
923 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
925 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
926 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
927 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
928 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
931 ** Generated Parser Headers
933 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
935 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
936 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
941 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
943 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
945 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
946 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
948 int bar_parse (void);
952 #define yyparse bar_parse
955 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
956 single compilation unit.
958 *** Exported symbols in C++
960 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
961 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
962 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
966 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
969 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
971 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
972 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
973 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
974 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
975 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
976 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
977 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
979 The following examples compares both:
981 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
982 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
983 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
989 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
990 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
992 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
993 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
994 > # if defined YYDEBUG
996 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
998 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
1001 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
1005 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
1006 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
1009 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
1010 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
1011 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
1012 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
1017 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
1018 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
1019 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
1022 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
1023 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
1026 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
1028 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
1030 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
1032 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
1036 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
1038 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
1040 ** glr.c improvements:
1042 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
1044 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
1045 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
1047 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
1049 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
1050 when -std is passed to GCC).
1052 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
1054 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
1055 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
1059 *** C++11 compatibility:
1061 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
1066 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
1067 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
1069 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
1070 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
1072 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
1074 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
1075 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
1076 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
1078 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
1080 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1081 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1083 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1087 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
1088 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
1089 documentation were fixed.
1091 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
1093 ** Changes in the manual:
1095 *** %printer is documented
1097 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
1098 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
1100 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
1101 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
1103 *** Several improvements have been made:
1105 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
1106 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
1107 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
1108 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
1112 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
1114 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
1115 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
1117 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
1119 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
1121 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
1122 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
1124 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
1126 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
1127 halts in the middle of its course.
1129 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
1131 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
1133 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
1134 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
1135 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
1136 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
1137 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
1139 ** Named references:
1141 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
1142 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
1145 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
1146 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
1147 as named references:
1149 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
1150 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
1152 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
1154 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
1155 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
1157 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
1158 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
1159 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
1161 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
1162 will help to stabilize them.
1163 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
1165 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
1167 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
1168 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
1169 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
1170 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
1171 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
1172 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
1173 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
1174 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
1175 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
1177 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
1178 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
1179 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
1180 file with these directives:
1182 %define lr.type lalr
1183 %define lr.type ielr
1184 %define lr.type canonical-lr
1186 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
1187 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
1188 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
1191 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1194 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
1196 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
1198 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
1199 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
1200 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
1201 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
1202 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
1203 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
1204 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
1205 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
1206 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
1207 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
1210 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
1211 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
1212 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
1213 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
1214 inconsistent states.
1216 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
1217 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
1218 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
1219 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
1220 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
1221 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
1222 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
1223 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
1226 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
1227 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
1229 %define parse.lac full
1231 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
1232 details including a few caveats.
1234 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
1237 ** %define improvements:
1239 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
1241 Each of these command-line options
1244 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
1247 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
1249 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
1251 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
1253 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
1254 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
1255 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
1256 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
1258 *** Variables renamed:
1260 The following %define variables
1263 lr.keep_unreachable_states
1265 have been renamed to
1268 lr.keep-unreachable-states
1270 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
1271 for backward compatibility.
1273 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
1275 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
1276 within quotations marks. For example,
1278 %define api.push-pull "push"
1282 %define api.push-pull push
1284 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1286 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1288 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1290 ** Character literals not of length one:
1292 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1293 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1294 the following grammar to be the same token:
1300 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1301 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1303 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1305 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1306 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1307 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1308 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1310 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1312 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1313 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1314 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1315 and "last" members, instead of
1317 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1321 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1322 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1326 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1332 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1336 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1337 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1341 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1345 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1347 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1348 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1349 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1350 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1352 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1354 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1355 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1356 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1357 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1358 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1359 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1360 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1361 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1363 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1365 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1366 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1367 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1368 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1370 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1374 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1376 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1377 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1378 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1379 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1380 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1381 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1382 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1384 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1386 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1387 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1388 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1389 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1390 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1392 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1393 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1394 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1395 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1396 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1397 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1398 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1399 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1400 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1401 shifted or discarded.
1403 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1404 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1405 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1406 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1408 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1409 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1410 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1411 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1412 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1413 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1414 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1415 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1416 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1417 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1418 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1419 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1422 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1424 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1426 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1427 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1429 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1431 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1433 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1435 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1436 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1438 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1440 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1442 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1443 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1444 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1445 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1448 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1449 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1450 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1451 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1453 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1454 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1455 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1456 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1458 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1460 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1461 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1463 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1465 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1467 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1468 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1469 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1470 suppress all warnings:
1474 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1476 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1477 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1478 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1482 This bug has been fixed.
1484 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1486 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1487 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1489 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1492 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1494 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1497 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1498 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1499 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1500 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1502 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1504 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1506 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1507 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1508 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1509 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1512 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1514 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1515 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1516 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1517 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1518 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1519 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1520 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1521 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1522 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1524 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1526 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1527 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1530 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1532 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1536 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1537 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1540 %code requires {CODE}
1541 %code provides {CODE}
1544 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1545 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1546 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1547 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1548 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1550 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1551 is still considered experimental.
1553 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1555 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1556 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1557 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1558 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1559 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1562 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1563 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1564 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1565 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1566 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1567 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1568 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1570 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1572 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1573 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1574 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1575 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1576 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1577 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1578 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1579 be removed altogether.
1581 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1582 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1583 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1584 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1585 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1586 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1587 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1588 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1589 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1590 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1592 ** Internationalization.
1594 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1595 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1598 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1600 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1601 declarations have been fixed.
1603 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1605 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1606 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1608 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1612 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1614 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1615 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1616 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1617 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1618 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1621 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1623 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1625 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1627 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1628 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1629 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1630 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1633 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1635 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1638 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1640 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1643 %define NAME "VALUE"
1645 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1649 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1650 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1654 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1655 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1656 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1657 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1658 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1660 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1661 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1663 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1665 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1666 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1668 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1669 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1670 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1674 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1675 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1676 %skeleton to select it.
1678 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1680 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1681 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1682 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1686 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1687 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1688 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1689 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1691 ** XML Automaton Report
1693 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1694 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1695 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1696 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1698 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1699 %defines. For example:
1703 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1704 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1705 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1706 instead of "unused".
1708 ** Unreachable State Removal
1710 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1711 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1712 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1714 1. Removes unreachable states.
1716 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1717 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1718 directives in existing grammar files.
1720 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1721 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1723 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1725 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1727 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1728 for further discussion.
1730 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1732 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1733 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1734 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1735 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1736 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1737 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1738 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1741 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1744 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1747 %file-prefix "parser"
1751 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1753 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1754 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1755 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1756 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1759 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1760 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1761 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1762 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1764 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1765 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1766 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1767 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1769 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1770 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1772 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1774 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1775 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1778 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1780 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1781 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1783 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1785 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1786 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1787 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1789 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1790 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1792 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1794 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1797 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1798 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1799 declared semantic type tags.
1801 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1802 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1805 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1806 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1807 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1808 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1810 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1811 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1814 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1817 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1818 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1819 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1821 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1822 completely removed from Bison.
1824 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1826 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1827 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1828 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1829 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1830 and is required by POSIX.
1832 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1833 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1835 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1839 %union { char *string; }
1840 %token <string> STRING1
1841 %token <string> STRING2
1842 %type <string> string1
1843 %type <string> string2
1844 %union { char character; }
1845 %token <character> CHR
1846 %type <character> chr
1847 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1848 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1849 %destructor { } <character>
1851 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1852 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1853 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1854 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1855 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1857 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1858 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1861 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1862 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1863 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1864 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1865 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1867 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1868 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1870 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1871 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1872 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1873 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1874 declared after the first %union.
1876 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1877 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1878 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1879 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1880 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1881 after the token definitions.
1883 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1884 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1886 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1887 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1890 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1891 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1892 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1896 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1897 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1898 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1899 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1900 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1903 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1904 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1905 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1906 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1909 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1910 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1911 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1914 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1915 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1916 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1917 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1921 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1922 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1923 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1924 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1925 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1928 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1929 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1931 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1932 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1934 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1935 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1936 in a future release.
1938 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1940 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1941 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1943 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1944 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1946 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1948 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1949 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1950 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1952 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1954 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1956 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1957 their contents together.
1959 ** New warning: unused values
1960 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1961 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1963 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1967 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1968 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1969 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1971 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1972 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1974 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1977 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1978 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1979 values are used, e.g.:
1981 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1982 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1985 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1986 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1988 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1990 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1991 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1993 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1994 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1995 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1996 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1998 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1999 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
2000 instead of warnings.
2002 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
2003 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
2004 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
2006 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
2008 ** %require "VERSION"
2009 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
2010 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
2012 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
2013 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
2014 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
2015 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
2016 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
2018 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
2019 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
2020 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
2021 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
2023 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
2024 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
2026 ** DJGPP support added.
2028 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
2030 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
2032 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
2033 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
2034 language is still English. For details, please see the new
2035 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
2036 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
2037 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
2039 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
2040 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
2041 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
2042 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
2044 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
2045 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
2046 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
2048 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
2049 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
2050 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
2051 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
2052 unexpected "number"'.
2054 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
2056 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
2058 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
2059 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
2060 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
2061 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
2062 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
2064 - Error token location.
2065 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
2066 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
2067 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
2068 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
2070 - Semicolon changes:
2071 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
2072 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
2074 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
2075 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
2076 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
2077 forget a closing quote.
2079 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
2083 - GLR grammars now support locations.
2085 - New directive: %initial-action.
2086 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
2087 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
2089 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
2090 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
2092 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
2093 This is a GNU extension.
2095 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
2096 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
2098 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
2100 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
2101 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
2105 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
2106 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
2107 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
2108 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
2109 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
2110 these violations will become errors again.
2112 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
2113 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
2115 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
2117 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
2119 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
2120 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
2122 ** syntax error processing
2124 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
2125 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
2128 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
2129 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
2132 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
2134 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
2135 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
2137 ** POSIX conformance
2139 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
2140 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
2141 compatibility with Yacc.
2143 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
2144 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
2145 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
2146 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
2149 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
2150 declared before use. C99 requires this.
2152 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
2153 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
2155 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
2156 output as "foo\\bar.y".
2158 - Yacc command and library now available
2159 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
2160 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
2161 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
2162 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
2164 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
2166 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
2167 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
2168 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
2170 ** Other compatibility issues
2172 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
2173 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
2174 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
2175 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
2176 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
2177 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
2179 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
2180 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
2182 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
2183 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
2185 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
2186 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
2187 withdrawn in a future release.
2192 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
2195 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
2196 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
2198 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
2199 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
2200 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
2203 - a single argument only can be added,
2204 - their types are weak (void *),
2205 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
2206 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
2208 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
2211 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
2212 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
2213 %parse-param {int *randomness}
2215 results in the following signatures:
2217 int yylex (int *nastiness);
2218 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2220 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
2222 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
2223 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2225 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
2226 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
2227 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
2229 ** #line in output files
2230 - --no-line works properly.
2232 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
2233 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
2234 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
2235 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
2237 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
2239 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
2241 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
2244 Fix spurious parse errors.
2247 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
2248 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
2251 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
2252 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
2256 but the converse remains an error:
2260 ** Values of mid-rule actions
2263 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
2265 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
2266 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
2268 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
2273 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
2274 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
2275 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
2276 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2278 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
2279 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
2282 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2283 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2284 now creates "bar.c".
2287 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2288 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2290 ** Unknown token numbers
2291 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2295 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2296 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2297 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2298 will be mapped onto another number.
2300 ** Verbose error messages
2301 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2302 error recovery is possible.
2305 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2307 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2308 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2309 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2310 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2311 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2312 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2313 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2314 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2315 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2318 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2321 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2322 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2323 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2324 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2326 ** Explicit initial rule
2327 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2328 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2332 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2333 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2335 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2336 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2338 ** Rules never reduced
2339 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2342 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
2343 On a grammar such as
2345 %token useless useful
2347 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2349 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2350 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2352 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2353 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2355 ** Default locations
2356 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2357 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2358 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2359 the computation of @$.
2361 ** Token end-of-file
2362 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2363 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2364 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2368 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2371 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2374 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2375 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2377 ** Incorrect token definitions
2380 bison used to output
2383 ** Token definitions as enums
2384 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2385 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2386 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2389 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2390 produces additional information:
2392 complete the core item sets with their closure
2393 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2394 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2396 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2397 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2398 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2401 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2402 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2410 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2412 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2415 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2416 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2417 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2419 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2420 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2421 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2422 kludge will be disabled.
2424 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2427 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2429 ** File name clashes are detected
2430 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2431 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2433 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2434 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2435 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2436 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2437 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2438 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2440 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2441 many portability hassles.
2443 ** DJGPP support added.
2445 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2447 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2450 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2451 under some conditions.
2456 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2458 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2460 ** Portability fixes
2462 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2464 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2468 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2469 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2470 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2471 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2472 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2474 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2475 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2476 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2478 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2481 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2483 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2484 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2487 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2488 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2489 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2491 ** Better C++ compliance
2492 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2493 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2496 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2499 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2502 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2505 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2508 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2510 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2512 ** Swedish translation
2515 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2516 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2517 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2519 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2520 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2521 previous allocations were not freed.
2523 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2524 Some newlines were missing.
2525 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2527 ** Fixed conflict report.
2528 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2532 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2534 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2536 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2538 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2540 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2541 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2543 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2545 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2549 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2551 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2553 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2554 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2557 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2560 ** Portability fixes.
2562 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2564 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2565 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2566 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2567 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2569 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2571 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2573 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2575 ** Russian translation added.
2577 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2579 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2581 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2583 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2585 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2587 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2588 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2591 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2592 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2595 Automatic location tracking.
2597 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2599 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2603 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2605 ** There is now a FAQ.
2607 * Changes in version 1.27:
2609 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2610 some systems has been fixed.
2612 * Changes in version 1.26:
2614 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2616 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2618 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2620 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2622 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2624 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2626 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2627 not provide alloca().
2629 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2631 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2632 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2634 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2635 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2636 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2638 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2639 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2640 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2643 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2644 directives in the parser file.
2646 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2647 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2649 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2650 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2651 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2652 a switch statement body.
2654 * Changes in version 1.23:
2656 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2657 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2658 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2659 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2661 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2663 * Changes in version 1.22:
2665 --help option added.
2667 * Changes in version 1.20:
2669 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2673 Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2675 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2677 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2678 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2679 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2680 (at your option) any later version.
2682 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2683 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2684 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2685 GNU General Public License for more details.
2687 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2688 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2690 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2691 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2692 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2693 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2694 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2695 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2696 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2697 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2698 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2699 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2700 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2701 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2702 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2703 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2704 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2705 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2706 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2707 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2708 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts parsers yystackp yyval yynerrs
2709 LocalWords: Théophile Ranquet Santet fno fnone stype associativity Tolmer
2710 LocalWords: Wprecedence Rassoul Wempty Paolo Bonzini parser's Michiel loc
2711 LocalWords: redeclaration sval fcaret reentrant XSLT xsl Wmaybe yyvsp Tedi
2712 LocalWords: pragmas noreturn untyped Rozenman unexpanded Wojciech Polak
2713 LocalWords: Alexandre MERCHANTABILITY yytype