3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
5 ** Changes in the format of error messages
7 This used to be the format of many error reports:
9 foo.y:5.10-24: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
10 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
14 foo.y:5.10-25: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
15 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
17 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
19 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
20 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
21 before re-throwing the exception.
23 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
26 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
28 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
29 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
30 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
31 then responsible to define her type.
33 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
34 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
37 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
38 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
41 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
42 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
45 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
47 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
48 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
49 numbered and left-justified.
51 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
54 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
55 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
57 Two nodes were added to the documentation: Xml and Graphviz.
59 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
63 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
67 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
68 have been fixed and extended.
70 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
72 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
73 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
78 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
79 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
82 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
84 Nul characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
86 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
87 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
89 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
91 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
93 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
97 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
99 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
100 users to the appropriate place to report them.
102 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
104 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
105 generated, are removed.
107 All the generated headers are self-contained.
109 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
111 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
112 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
113 For instance the header generated from
115 %define api.prefix "calc"
116 %defines "lib/parse.h"
118 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
120 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
122 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
125 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
126 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
127 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
131 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
133 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
134 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
137 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
141 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
142 suite have been fixed.
144 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
146 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
147 invalid C++. This is fixed.
149 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
151 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
153 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
155 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
159 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
160 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
161 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
163 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
167 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
171 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
173 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
175 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
177 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
178 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
181 ** Type names in actions
183 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
184 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
186 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
188 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
189 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
191 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
195 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
196 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
200 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
201 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
204 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
206 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
209 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
210 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
212 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
215 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
217 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
218 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
219 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
220 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
223 ** Generated Parser Headers
225 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
227 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
228 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
233 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
235 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
237 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
238 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
240 int bar_parse (void);
244 #define yyparse bar_parse
247 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
248 single compilation unit.
250 *** Exported symbols in C++
252 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
253 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
254 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
258 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
261 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
263 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
264 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
265 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
266 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
267 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
268 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
269 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
271 The following examples compares both:
273 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
274 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
275 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
281 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
282 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
284 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
285 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
286 > # if defined YYDEBUG
288 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
290 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
293 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
297 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
298 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
301 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
302 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
303 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
304 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
309 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
310 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
311 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
314 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
315 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
318 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
320 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
322 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
324 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
328 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
330 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
332 ** glr.c improvements:
334 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
336 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
337 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
339 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
341 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
342 when -std is passed to GCC).
344 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
346 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
347 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
351 *** C++11 compatibility:
353 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
358 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
359 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
361 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
362 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
364 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
366 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
367 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
368 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
370 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
372 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
373 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
375 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
379 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
380 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
381 documentation were fixed.
383 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
385 ** Changes in the manual:
387 *** %printer is documented
389 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
390 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
392 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
393 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
395 *** Several improvements have been made:
397 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
398 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
399 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
400 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
404 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
406 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
407 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
409 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
411 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
413 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
414 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
416 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
418 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
419 halts in the middle of its course.
421 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
423 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
425 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
426 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
427 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
428 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
429 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
433 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
434 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
437 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
438 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
441 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
442 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
444 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
446 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
447 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
449 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
450 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
451 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
453 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
454 will help to stabilize them.
456 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
458 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
459 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
460 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
461 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
462 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
463 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
464 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
465 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
466 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
468 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
469 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
470 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
471 file with these directives:
475 %define lr.type canonical-lr
477 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
478 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
479 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
482 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
485 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
487 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
488 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
489 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
490 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
491 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
492 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
493 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
494 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
495 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
496 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
499 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
500 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
501 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
502 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
505 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
506 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
507 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
508 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
509 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
510 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
511 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
512 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
515 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
516 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
518 %define parse.lac full
520 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
521 details including a few caveats.
523 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
526 ** %define improvements:
528 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
530 Each of these command-line options
533 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
536 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
538 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
540 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
542 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
543 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
544 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
545 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
547 *** Variables renamed:
549 The following %define variables
552 lr.keep_unreachable_states
557 lr.keep-unreachable-states
559 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
560 for backward compatibility.
562 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
564 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
565 within quotations marks. For example,
567 %define api.push-pull "push"
571 %define api.push-pull push
573 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
575 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
577 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
579 ** Character literals not of length one:
581 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
582 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
583 the following grammar to be the same token:
589 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
590 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
592 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
594 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
595 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
596 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
597 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
599 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
601 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
602 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
603 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
604 and "last" members, instead of
606 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
610 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
611 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
615 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
621 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
625 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
626 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
630 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
634 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
636 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
637 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
638 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
639 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
641 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
643 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
644 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
645 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
646 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
647 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
648 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
649 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
650 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
652 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
654 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
655 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
656 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
657 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
659 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
663 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
665 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
666 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
667 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
668 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
669 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
670 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
671 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
673 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
675 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
676 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
677 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
678 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
679 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
681 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
682 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
683 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
684 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
685 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
686 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
687 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
688 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
689 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
690 shifted or discarded.
692 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
693 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
694 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
695 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
697 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
698 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
699 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
700 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
701 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
702 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
703 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
704 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
705 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
706 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
707 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
708 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
711 ** Java skeleton fixes:
713 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
715 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
716 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
718 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
720 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
722 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
724 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
725 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
727 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
729 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
731 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
732 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
733 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
734 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
737 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
738 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
739 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
740 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
742 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
743 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
744 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
745 then have no effect on the conflict report.
747 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
749 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
750 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
752 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
754 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
756 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
757 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
758 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
759 suppress all warnings:
763 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
765 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
766 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
767 produced an assertion failure. For example:
771 This bug has been fixed.
773 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
775 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
776 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
778 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
781 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
783 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
786 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
787 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
788 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
789 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
791 ** Minor documentation fixes.
793 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
795 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
796 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
797 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
798 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
801 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
803 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
804 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
805 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
806 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
807 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
808 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
809 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
810 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
811 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
813 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
815 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
816 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
819 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
821 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
825 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
826 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
829 %code requires {CODE}
830 %code provides {CODE}
833 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
834 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
835 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
836 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
837 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
839 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
840 is still considered experimental.
842 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
844 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
845 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
846 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
847 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
848 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
851 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
852 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
853 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
854 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
855 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
856 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
857 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
859 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
861 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
862 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
863 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
864 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
865 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
866 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
867 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
868 be removed altogether.
870 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
871 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
872 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
873 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
874 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
875 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
876 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
877 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
878 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
879 2.4.2 is not necessary.
881 ** Internationalization.
883 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
884 message translations were not installed although supported by the
887 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
889 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
890 declarations have been fixed.
892 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
894 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
895 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
897 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
901 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
903 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
904 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
905 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
906 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
907 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
910 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
912 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
914 ** %language is an experimental feature.
916 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
917 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
918 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
919 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
922 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
924 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
927 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
929 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
934 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
938 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
939 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
943 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
944 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
945 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
946 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
947 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
949 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
950 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
952 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
954 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
955 feedback will help to stabilize it.
957 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
958 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
959 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
963 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
964 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
965 %skeleton to select it.
967 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
969 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
970 feedback will help to stabilize it.
974 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
975 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
976 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
977 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
979 ** XML Automaton Report
981 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
982 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
983 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
985 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
986 %defines. For example:
990 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
991 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
992 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
995 ** Unreachable State Removal
997 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
998 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
999 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1001 1. Removes unreachable states.
1003 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1004 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1005 directives in existing grammar files.
1007 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1008 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1010 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1012 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1014 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1015 for further discussion.
1017 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1019 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1020 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1021 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1022 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1023 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1024 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1025 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1028 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1031 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1034 %file-prefix "parser"
1038 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1040 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1041 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1042 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1043 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1046 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1047 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1048 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1049 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1051 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1052 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1053 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1054 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1056 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1057 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1059 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1061 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1062 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1065 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1067 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1068 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1070 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1072 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1073 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1074 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1076 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1077 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1079 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1081 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1084 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1085 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1086 declared semantic type tags.
1088 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1089 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1092 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1093 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1094 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1095 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1097 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1098 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1101 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1104 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1105 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1106 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1108 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1109 completely removed from Bison.
1111 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1113 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1114 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1115 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1116 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1117 and is required by POSIX.
1119 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1120 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1122 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1126 %union { char *string; }
1127 %token <string> STRING1
1128 %token <string> STRING2
1129 %type <string> string1
1130 %type <string> string2
1131 %union { char character; }
1132 %token <character> CHR
1133 %type <character> chr
1134 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1135 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1136 %destructor { } <character>
1138 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1139 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1140 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1141 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1142 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1144 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1145 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1148 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1149 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1150 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1151 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1152 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1154 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1155 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1157 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1158 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1159 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1160 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1161 declared after the first %union.
1163 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1164 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1165 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1166 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1167 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1168 after the token definitions.
1170 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1171 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1173 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1174 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1177 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1178 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1179 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1183 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1184 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1185 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1186 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1187 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1190 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1191 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1192 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1193 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1196 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1197 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1198 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1201 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1202 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1203 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1204 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1208 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1209 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1210 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1211 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1212 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1215 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1216 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1218 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1219 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1221 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1222 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1223 in a future release.
1225 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1227 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1228 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1230 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1231 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1233 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1235 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1236 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1237 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1239 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1241 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1243 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1244 their contents together.
1246 ** New warning: unused values
1247 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1248 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1250 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1254 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1255 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1256 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1258 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1259 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1261 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1264 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1265 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1266 values are used, e.g.:
1268 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1269 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1272 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1273 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1275 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1277 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1278 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1280 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1281 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1282 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1283 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1285 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1286 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1287 instead of warnings.
1289 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1290 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1291 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1293 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1295 ** %require "VERSION"
1296 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1297 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1299 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1300 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1301 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1302 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1303 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1305 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1306 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1307 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1308 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1310 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1311 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1313 ** DJGPP support added.
1315 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1317 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1319 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1320 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1321 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1322 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1323 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1324 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1326 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1327 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1328 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1329 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1331 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1332 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1333 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1335 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1336 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1337 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1338 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1339 unexpected "number"'.
1341 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1343 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1345 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1346 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1347 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1348 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1349 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1351 - Error token location.
1352 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1353 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1354 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1355 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1357 - Semicolon changes:
1358 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1359 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1361 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1362 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1363 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1364 forget a closing quote.
1366 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1370 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1372 - New directive: %initial-action.
1373 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1374 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1376 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1377 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1379 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1380 This is a GNU extension.
1382 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1383 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1385 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1387 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1388 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1392 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1393 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1394 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1395 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1396 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1397 these violations will become errors again.
1399 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1400 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1402 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1404 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1406 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1407 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1409 ** syntax error processing
1411 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1412 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1415 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1416 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1419 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1421 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1422 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1424 ** POSIX conformance
1426 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1427 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1428 compatibility with Yacc.
1430 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1431 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1432 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1433 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1436 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1437 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1439 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1440 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1442 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1443 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1445 - Yacc command and library now available
1446 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1447 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1448 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1449 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1451 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1453 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1454 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1455 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1457 ** Other compatibility issues
1459 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1460 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1461 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1462 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1463 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1464 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1466 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1467 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1469 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1470 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1472 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1473 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1474 withdrawn in a future release.
1479 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1482 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1483 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1485 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1486 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1487 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1490 - a single argument only can be added,
1491 - their types are weak (void *),
1492 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1493 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1495 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1498 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1499 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1500 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1502 results in the following signatures:
1504 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1505 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1507 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1509 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1510 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1512 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1513 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1514 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1516 ** #line in output files
1517 - --no-line works properly.
1519 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1520 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1521 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1522 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1524 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1526 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1528 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1531 Fix spurious parse errors.
1534 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1535 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1538 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1539 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1543 but the converse remains an error:
1547 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1550 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1552 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1553 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1555 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1560 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1561 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1562 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1563 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1565 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1566 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1569 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1570 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1571 now creates "bar.c".
1574 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1575 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1577 ** Unknown token numbers
1578 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1582 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1583 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1584 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1585 will be mapped onto another number.
1587 ** Verbose error messages
1588 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1589 error recovery is possible.
1592 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1594 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1595 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1596 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1597 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1598 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1599 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1600 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1601 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1602 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1605 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1608 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1609 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1610 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1611 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1613 ** Explicit initial rule
1614 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1615 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1619 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1620 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1622 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1623 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1625 ** Rules never reduced
1626 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1629 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1630 On a grammar such as
1632 %token useless useful
1634 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1636 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1637 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1639 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1640 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1642 ** Default locations
1643 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1644 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1645 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1646 the computation of @$.
1648 ** Token end-of-file
1649 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1650 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1651 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1655 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1658 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1661 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1662 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1664 ** Incorrect token definitions
1667 bison used to output
1670 ** Token definitions as enums
1671 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1672 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1673 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1676 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1677 produces additional information:
1679 complete the core item sets with their closure
1680 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1681 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1683 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1684 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1685 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1688 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1689 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1697 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1699 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1702 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1703 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1704 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1706 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1707 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1708 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1709 kludge will be disabled.
1711 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1714 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1716 ** File name clashes are detected
1717 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1718 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1720 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1721 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1722 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1723 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1724 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1725 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1727 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1728 many portability hassles.
1730 ** DJGPP support added.
1732 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
1734 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1737 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1738 under some conditions.
1743 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1745 ** Fix Yacc output file names
1747 ** Portability fixes
1749 ** Italian, Dutch translations
1751 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1755 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
1756 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1757 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1758 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1759 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
1761 ** Use of alloca in parsers
1762 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1763 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1765 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1768 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1770 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1771 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1774 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1775 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1776 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1778 ** Better C++ compliance
1779 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1780 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1783 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1786 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1789 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1792 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1795 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1797 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1799 ** Swedish translation
1802 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1803 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1804 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1806 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1807 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1808 previous allocations were not freed.
1810 ** Fixed verbose output file.
1811 Some newlines were missing.
1812 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1814 ** Fixed conflict report.
1815 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1819 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1821 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1823 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1825 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1827 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1828 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1830 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1832 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1836 New, aliasing "--output-file".
1838 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1840 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
1841 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
1844 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
1847 ** Portability fixes.
1849 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1851 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1852 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1853 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1854 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1856 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
1858 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1860 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
1862 ** Russian translation added.
1864 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
1866 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
1868 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
1870 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
1872 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
1874 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
1875 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
1878 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
1879 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
1882 Automatic location tracking.
1884 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
1886 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
1890 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
1892 ** There is now a FAQ.
1894 * Changes in version 1.27:
1896 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
1897 some systems has been fixed.
1899 * Changes in version 1.26:
1901 ** Bison now uses Automake.
1903 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
1905 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
1907 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
1909 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
1911 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
1913 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
1914 not provide alloca().
1916 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
1918 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
1919 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
1921 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
1922 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
1923 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
1925 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
1926 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
1927 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
1930 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
1931 directives in the parser file.
1933 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
1934 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
1936 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
1937 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
1938 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
1939 a switch statement body.
1941 * Changes in version 1.23:
1943 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
1944 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
1945 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
1946 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
1948 Line numbers in output file corrected.
1950 * Changes in version 1.22:
1952 --help option added.
1954 * Changes in version 1.20:
1956 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
1960 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1962 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
1964 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1965 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1966 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1967 (at your option) any later version.
1969 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1970 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1971 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1972 GNU General Public License for more details.
1974 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1975 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1977 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
1978 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
1979 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
1980 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
1981 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
1982 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
1983 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
1984 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
1985 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
1986 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
1987 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
1988 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
1989 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
1990 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
1991 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
1992 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
1993 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
1994 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp calc yyo fval Wmaybe
1995 LocalWords: yyvsp pragmas noreturn java's