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1 GNU Bison NEWS
2
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5 ** Future changes
6
7 Bison will stop adding a semicolon at the end of the actions:
8
9 foo.y:2.22: warning: a ';' might be needed at the end of action code
10 exp: "num" { $$ = $1 }
11 ^
12 foo.y:2.22: future versions of Bison will not add the ';'
13
14 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
15 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
16 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
17
18 ** Incompatible changes
19
20 *** Obsolete features
21
22 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
23
24 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
25 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
26
27 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
28 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
29
30 ** Bug fixes
31
32 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines
33
34 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
35 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
36 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
37 preprocessor expansion:
38
39 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
40
41 This is has been fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
42 identifiers for user-provided variables.
43
44 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
45
46 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
47 Santet.
48
49 *** Carets
50
51 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
52 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
53 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
54
55 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
56
57 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
58 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
59 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
60
61 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
62 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
63 errors (and only those):
64
65 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
66
67 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
68 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
69
70 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
71
72 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
73
74 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
75 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
76
77 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
78 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
79 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
80
81 *** The display of warnings is now richer
82
83 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
84
85 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
86
87 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
88 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
89 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
90
91 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
92 with failure):
93
94 bison: warnings being treated as errors
95 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
96
97 it now reports:
98
99 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
100
101 *** Deprecated constructs
102
103 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
104 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
105 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
106
107 *** Useless semantic types
108
109 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
110 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
111 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
112 types that trigger the warning:
113
114 %token <type1> term
115 %type <type2> nterm
116 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
117 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
118 %%
119 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
120
121 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
122 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
123
124 *** Undefined but unused symbols
125
126 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
127 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
128
129 %printer {} symbol1
130 %destructor {} symbol2
131 %type <type> symbol3
132 %%
133 exp: "a";
134
135 *** Useless destructors or printers
136
137 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
138 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
139 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
140 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
141
142 %token <type1> token1
143 <type2> token2
144 <type3> token3
145 <type4> token4
146 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
147 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
148
149 *** Conflicts
150
151 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
152 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
153
154 %glr-parser
155 %%
156 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
157
158 compare the previous version of bison:
159
160 $ bison foo.y
161 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
162 $ bison -Werror foo.y
163 bison: warnings being treated as errors
164 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
165
166 with the new behavior:
167
168 $ bison foo.y
169 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
170 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
171 $ bison -Werror foo.y
172 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
173 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
174
175 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
176
177 %expect 0
178 %glr-parser
179 %%
180 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
181
182 Former behavior:
183
184 $ bison bar.y
185 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
186 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
187 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
188
189 New one:
190
191 $ bison bar.y
192 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
193 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
194
195 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
196
197 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
198 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
199 or more arguments. Instead of
200
201 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
202 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
203 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
204 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
205
206 one may now declare
207
208 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
209
210 ** Java skeleton improvements
211
212 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
213
214 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
215 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
216 and "%define init_throws".
217
218 ** C++ skeletons improvements
219
220 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
221
222 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
223 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
224 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
225
226 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
227
228 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
229
230 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
231
232 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
233 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
234 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
235 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
236 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
237 factory invoked by the user actions).
238
239 ** Renamed %define variables
240
241 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
242 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
243
244 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
245 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
246 namespace -> api.namespace
247 stype -> api.value.type
248
249 ** Variable api.token.prefix
250
251 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
252 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
253 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
254
255 %token FILE for ERROR
256 %define api.token.prefix "TOK_"
257 %%
258 start: FILE for ERROR;
259
260 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
261 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
262 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
263 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
264
265 ** Variable parse.error
266
267 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
268 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
269 verbose".
270
271 ** Semantic predicates
272
273 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
274
275 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
276 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
277 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
278 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
279 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
280 expressions.
281
282 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
283
284 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
285 reduce/reduce conflicts.
286
287 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
288
289 ** Bug fixes
290
291 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
292
293 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
294
295 ** Diagnostics are improved
296
297 *** Changes in the format of error messages
298
299 This used to be the format of many error reports:
300
301 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
302 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
303
304 It is now:
305
306 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
307 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
308
309 *** New format for error reports: carets
310
311 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
312
313 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
314 %type <sval> exp
315 ^^^^^^
316 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
317 %type <ival> exp
318 ^^^^^^
319
320 or
321
322 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
323 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
324 ^^^^
325 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
326 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
327 ^^^
328 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
329 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
330 ^^^
331 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
332 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
333 ^^^
334
335 The default behaviour for now is still not to display these unless
336 explictly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
337 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
338 -fno-caret).
339
340 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
341
342 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
343 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
344 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
345 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
346 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
347 parsers).
348
349 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
350 "%define api.pure full".
351
352 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
353
354 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
355 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
356 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
357 then responsible to define her type.
358
359 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
360 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
361 them.
362
363 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
364 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
365 compatibility).
366
367 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
368 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
369 api.position.type.
370
371 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
372
373 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
374 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
375 before re-throwing the exception.
376
377 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
378 appreciated.
379
380 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
381
382 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
383 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
384 numbered and left-justified.
385
386 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
387 diamond shaped nodes.
388
389 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
390 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
391
392 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
393
394 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
395 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
396
397 ** Documentation
398
399 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
400 have been fixed and extended.
401
402 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
403 were not properly documented.
404
405 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
406
407 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
408
409 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
410 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
411 reporting them to us.
412
413 ** Bug fixes
414
415 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
416 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
417 3.2.
418
419 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
420
421 Nul characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
422
423 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
424 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
425
426 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
427
428 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
429
430 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
431
432 ** Bug fixes
433
434 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
435
436 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
437 users to the appropriate place to report them.
438
439 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
440
441 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
442 generated, are removed.
443
444 All the generated headers are self-contained.
445
446 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
447
448 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
449 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
450 For instance the header generated from
451
452 %define api.prefix "calc"
453 %defines "lib/parse.h"
454
455 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
456
457 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
458
459 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
460 warnings such as:
461
462 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
463 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
464 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
465 *++yyvsp = yylval;
466 ^
467
468 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
469
470 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
471 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
472 addressed.
473
474 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
475
476 ** Bug fixes
477
478 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
479 suite have been fixed.
480
481 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
482
483 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
484 invalid C++. This is fixed.
485
486 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
487
488 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
489
490 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
491
492 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
493
494 ** Future Changes
495
496 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
497 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
498 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
499
500 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
501
502 write:
503
504 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
505
506 ** Bug fixes
507
508 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
509
510 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
511
512 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
513
514 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
515 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
516 now does.
517
518 ** Type names in actions
519
520 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
521 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
522
523 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
524
525 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
526 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
527
528 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
529
530 ** Future changes
531
532 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
533 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
534
535 *** K&R C parsers
536
537 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
538 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
539 compilers.
540
541 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
542
543 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
544 YYLTYPE.
545
546 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
547 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
548
549 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
550 %error-verbose.
551
552 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
553
554 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
555 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
556 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
557 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
558 it.
559
560 ** Generated Parser Headers
561
562 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
563
564 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
565 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
566
567 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
568 # define YY_FOO_H
569 ...
570 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
571
572 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
573
574 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
575 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
576
577 int bar_parse (void);
578
579 rather than
580
581 #define yyparse bar_parse
582 int yyparse (void);
583
584 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
585 single compilation unit.
586
587 *** Exported symbols in C++
588
589 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
590 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
591 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
592
593 *** YYLSP_NEEDED
594
595 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
596 longer defined.
597
598 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
599
600 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
601 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
602 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
603 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
604 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
605 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
606 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
607
608 The following examples compares both:
609
610 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
611 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
612 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
613 %% %%
614 exp: 'a'; exp: 'a';
615
616 bison generates:
617
618 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
619 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
620
621 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
622 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
623 > # if defined YYDEBUG
624 > # if YYDEBUG
625 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
626 > # else
627 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
628 > # endif
629 > # else
630 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
631 > # endif
632 # endif | # endif
633
634 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
635 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
636 # endif # endif
637
638 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
639 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
640 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
641 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
642 FOO = 258 FOO = 258
643 }; };
644 # endif # endif
645
646 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
647 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
648 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
649 { {
650 int ival; int ival;
651 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
652 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
653 #endif #endif
654
655 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
656
657 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
658
659 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
660
661 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
662
663 ** Future changes:
664
665 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
666
667 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
668
669 ** glr.c improvements:
670
671 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
672
673 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
674 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
675
676 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
677
678 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
679 when -std is passed to GCC).
680
681 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
682
683 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
684 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
685
686 ** Changes for C++:
687
688 *** C++11 compatibility:
689
690 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
691 or higher.
692
693 *** Header guards
694
695 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
696 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
697
698 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
699 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
700 ...
701 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
702
703 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
704 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
705 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
706
707 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
708
709 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
710 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
711 ...
712 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
713
714 *** C++ locations:
715
716 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
717 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
718 documentation were fixed.
719
720 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
721
722 ** Changes in the manual:
723
724 *** %printer is documented
725
726 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
727 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
728
729 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
730 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
731
732 *** Several improvements have been made:
733
734 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
735 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
736 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
737 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
738
739 ** Building bison:
740
741 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
742
743 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
744 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
745
746 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
747
748 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
749
750 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
751 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
752
753 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
754
755 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
756 halts in the middle of its course.
757
758 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
759
760 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
761
762 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
763 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
764 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
765 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
766 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
767
768 ** Named references:
769
770 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
771 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
772 actions code.
773
774 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
775 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
776 as named references:
777
778 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
779 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
780
781 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
782
783 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
784 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
785
786 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
787 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
788 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
789
790 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
791 will help to stabilize them.
792 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
793
794 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
795
796 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
797 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
798 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
799 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
800 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
801 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
802 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
803 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
804 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
805
806 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
807 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
808 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
809 file with these directives:
810
811 %define lr.type lalr
812 %define lr.type ielr
813 %define lr.type canonical-lr
814
815 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
816 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
817 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
818 manual.
819
820 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
821 stabilize them.
822
823 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
824
825 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
826 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
827 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
828 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
829 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
830 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
831 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
832 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
833 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
834 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
835 tokens.
836
837 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
838 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
839 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
840 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
841 inconsistent states.
842
843 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
844 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
845 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
846 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
847 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
848 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
849 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
850 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
851 power.
852
853 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
854 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
855
856 %define parse.lac full
857
858 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
859 details including a few caveats.
860
861 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
862 stabilize it.
863
864 ** %define improvements:
865
866 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
867
868 Each of these command-line options
869
870 -D NAME[=VALUE]
871 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
872
873 -F NAME[=VALUE]
874 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
875
876 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
877
878 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
879
880 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
881 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
882 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
883 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
884
885 *** Variables renamed:
886
887 The following %define variables
888
889 api.push_pull
890 lr.keep_unreachable_states
891
892 have been renamed to
893
894 api.push-pull
895 lr.keep-unreachable-states
896
897 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
898 for backward compatibility.
899
900 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
901
902 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
903 within quotations marks. For example,
904
905 %define api.push-pull "push"
906
907 can be rewritten as
908
909 %define api.push-pull push
910
911 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
912
913 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
914
915 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
916
917 ** Character literals not of length one:
918
919 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
920 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
921 the following grammar to be the same token:
922
923 exp: exp '++'
924 | exp '+' exp
925 ;
926
927 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
928 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
929
930 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
931
932 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
933 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
934 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
935 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
936
937 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
938
939 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
940 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
941 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
942 and "last" members, instead of
943
944 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
945 do \
946 if (N) \
947 { \
948 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
949 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
950 } \
951 else \
952 { \
953 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
954 } \
955 while (false)
956
957 use:
958
959 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
960 do \
961 if (N) \
962 { \
963 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
964 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
965 } \
966 else \
967 { \
968 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
969 } \
970 while (false)
971
972 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
973
974 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
975 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
976 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
977 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
978
979 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
980
981 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
982 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
983 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
984 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
985 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
986 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
987 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
988 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
989
990 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
991
992 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
993 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
994 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
995 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
996
997 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
998
999 instead of
1000
1001 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1002
1003 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1004 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1005 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1006 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1007 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1008 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1009 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1010
1011 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1012
1013 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1014 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1015 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1016 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1017 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1018
1019 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1020 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1021 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1022 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1023 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1024 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1025 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1026 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1027 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1028 shifted or discarded.
1029
1030 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1031 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1032 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1033 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1034
1035 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1036 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1037 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1038 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1039 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1040 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1041 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1042 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1043 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1044 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1045 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1046 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1047 by default.
1048
1049 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1050
1051 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1052
1053 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1054 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1055
1056 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1057
1058 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1059
1060 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1061
1062 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1063 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1064
1065 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1066
1067 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1068
1069 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1070 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1071 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1072 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1073 example:
1074
1075 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1076 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1077 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1078 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1079
1080 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1081 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1082 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1083 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1084
1085 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1086
1087 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1088 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1089
1090 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1091
1092 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1093
1094 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1095 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1096 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1097 suppress all warnings:
1098
1099 bison -Wnone gram.y
1100
1101 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1102
1103 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1104 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1105 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1106
1107 %left END 0
1108
1109 This bug has been fixed.
1110
1111 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1112
1113 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1114 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1115
1116 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1117 been fixed.
1118
1119 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1120
1121 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1122 been fixed.
1123
1124 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1125 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1126 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1127 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1128
1129 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1130
1131 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1132
1133 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1134 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1135 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1136 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1137 affected platforms.
1138
1139 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1140
1141 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1142 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1143 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1144 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1145 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1146 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1147 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1148 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1149 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1150
1151 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1152
1153 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1154 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1155 avoided.
1156
1157 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1158
1159 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1160
1161 %{CODE%}
1162
1163 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1164 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1165
1166 %code {CODE}
1167 %code requires {CODE}
1168 %code provides {CODE}
1169 %code top {CODE}
1170
1171 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1172 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1173 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1174 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1175 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1176
1177 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1178 is still considered experimental.
1179
1180 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1181
1182 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1183 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1184 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1185 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1186 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1187 specified by POSIX.
1188
1189 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1190 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1191 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1192 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1193 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1194 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1195 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1196
1197 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1198
1199 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1200 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1201 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1202 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1203 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1204 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1205 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1206 be removed altogether.
1207
1208 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1209 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1210 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1211 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1212 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1213 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1214 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1215 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1216 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1217 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1218
1219 ** Internationalization.
1220
1221 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1222 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1223 host system.
1224
1225 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1226
1227 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1228 declarations have been fixed.
1229
1230 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1231
1232 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1233 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1234
1235 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1236
1237 instead of
1238
1239 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1240
1241 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1242 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1243 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1244 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1245 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1246 feature.
1247
1248 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1249
1250 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1251
1252 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1253
1254 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1255 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1256 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1257 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1258 in future releases.
1259
1260 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1261
1262 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1263 fixed.
1264
1265 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1266
1267 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1268 are now deprecated:
1269
1270 %define NAME "VALUE"
1271
1272 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1273
1274 %define api.pure
1275
1276 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1277 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1278
1279 ** Push Parsing
1280
1281 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1282 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1283 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1284 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1285 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1286
1287 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1288 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1289
1290 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1291
1292 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1293 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1294
1295 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1296 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1297 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1298
1299 ** Java
1300
1301 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1302 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1303 %skeleton to select it.
1304
1305 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1306
1307 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1308 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1309 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1310
1311 ** %language
1312
1313 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1314 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1315 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1316 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1317
1318 ** XML Automaton Report
1319
1320 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1321 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1322 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1323 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1324
1325 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1326 %defines. For example:
1327
1328 %defines "parser.h"
1329
1330 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1331 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1332 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1333 instead of "unused".
1334
1335 ** Unreachable State Removal
1336
1337 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1338 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1339 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1340
1341 1. Removes unreachable states.
1342
1343 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1344 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1345 directives in existing grammar files.
1346
1347 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1348 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1349
1350 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1351
1352 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1353
1354 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1355 for further discussion.
1356
1357 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1358
1359 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1360 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1361 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1362 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1363 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1364 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1365 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1366 code.
1367
1368 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1369 name.
1370
1371 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1372 deprecated:
1373
1374 %file-prefix "parser"
1375 %name-prefix "c_"
1376 %output "parser.c"
1377
1378 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1379
1380 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1381 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1382 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1383 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1384 it:
1385
1386 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1387 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1388 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1389 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1390
1391 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1392 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1393 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1394 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1395
1396 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1397 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1398
1399 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1400
1401 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1402 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1403 about unused $2 in:
1404
1405 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1406
1407 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1408 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1409
1410 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1411
1412 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1413 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1414 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1415
1416 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1417 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1418
1419 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1420
1421 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1422 %printer's:
1423
1424 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1425 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1426 declared semantic type tags.
1427
1428 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1429 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1430 type tags.
1431
1432 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1433 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1434 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1435 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1436
1437 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1438 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1439 features.
1440
1441 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1442 details.
1443
1444 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1445 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1446 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1447
1448 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1449 completely removed from Bison.
1450
1451 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1452
1453 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1454 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1455 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1456 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1457 and is required by POSIX.
1458
1459 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1460 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1461
1462 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1463
1464 For example:
1465
1466 %union { char *string; }
1467 %token <string> STRING1
1468 %token <string> STRING2
1469 %type <string> string1
1470 %type <string> string2
1471 %union { char character; }
1472 %token <character> CHR
1473 %type <character> chr
1474 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1475 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1476 %destructor { } <character>
1477
1478 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1479 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1480 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1481 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1482 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1483
1484 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1485 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1486 future versions.]
1487
1488 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1489 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1490 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1491 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1492 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1493
1494 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1495 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1496
1497 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1498 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1499 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1500 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1501 declared after the first %union.
1502
1503 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1504 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1505 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1506 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1507 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1508 after the token definitions.
1509
1510 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1511 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1512
1513 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1514 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1515 %after-header.
1516
1517 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1518 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1519 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1520 convenient for you:
1521
1522 %before-header {
1523 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1524 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1525 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1526 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1527 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1528 }
1529 %start-header {
1530 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1531 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1532 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1533 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1534 }
1535 %union {
1536 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1537 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1538 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1539 }
1540 %end-header {
1541 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1542 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1543 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1544 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1545 * definitions. */
1546 }
1547 %after-header {
1548 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1549 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1550 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1551 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1552 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1553 }
1554
1555 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1556 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1557
1558 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1559 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1560
1561 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1562 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1563 in a future release.
1564
1565 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1566
1567 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1568 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1569
1570 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1571 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1572
1573 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1574
1575 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1576 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1577 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1578
1579 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1580
1581 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1582
1583 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1584 their contents together.
1585
1586 ** New warning: unused values
1587 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1588 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1589
1590 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1591 | exp "+" exp
1592 ;
1593
1594 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1595 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1596 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1597
1598 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1599 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1600 | exp "+" exp
1601 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1602 ;
1603
1604 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1605 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1606 values are used, e.g.:
1607
1608 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1609 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1610 ;
1611
1612 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1613 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1614
1615 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1616
1617 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1618 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1619
1620 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1621 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1622 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1623 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1624
1625 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1626 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1627 instead of warnings.
1628
1629 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1630 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1631 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1632
1633 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1634
1635 ** %require "VERSION"
1636 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1637 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1638
1639 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1640 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1641 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1642 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1643 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1644
1645 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1646 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1647 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1648 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1649
1650 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1651 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1652
1653 ** DJGPP support added.
1654 \f
1655 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1656
1657 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1658
1659 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1660 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1661 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1662 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1663 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1664 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1665
1666 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1667 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1668 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1669 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1670
1671 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1672 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1673 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1674
1675 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1676 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1677 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1678 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1679 unexpected "number"'.
1680 \f
1681 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1682
1683 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1684
1685 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1686 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1687 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1688 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1689 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1690
1691 - Error token location.
1692 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1693 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1694 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1695 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1696
1697 - Semicolon changes:
1698 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1699 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1700
1701 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1702 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1703 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1704 forget a closing quote.
1705
1706 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1707
1708 ** New features
1709
1710 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1711
1712 - New directive: %initial-action.
1713 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1714 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1715
1716 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1717 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1718
1719 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1720 This is a GNU extension.
1721
1722 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1723 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1724
1725 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1726
1727 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1728 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1729
1730 ** Bug fixes
1731
1732 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1733 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1734 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1735 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1736 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1737 these violations will become errors again.
1738
1739 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1740 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1741
1742 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1743 \f
1744 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1745
1746 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1747 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1748
1749 ** syntax error processing
1750
1751 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1752 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1753
1754 - %destructor
1755 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1756 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1757
1758 - %error-verbose
1759 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1760
1761 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1762 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1763
1764 ** POSIX conformance
1765
1766 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1767 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1768 compatibility with Yacc.
1769
1770 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1771 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1772 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1773 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1774 be consistent.
1775
1776 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1777 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1778
1779 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1780 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1781
1782 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1783 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1784
1785 - Yacc command and library now available
1786 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1787 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1788 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1789 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1790
1791 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1792
1793 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1794 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1795 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1796
1797 ** Other compatibility issues
1798
1799 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1800 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1801 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1802 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1803 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1804 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1805
1806 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1807 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1808
1809 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1810 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1811
1812 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1813 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1814 withdrawn in a future release.
1815
1816 ** GLR parser notes
1817
1818 - GLR and inline
1819 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1820 C keyword "inline".
1821
1822 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1823 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1824
1825 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1826 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1827 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1828 shortcomings:
1829
1830 - a single argument only can be added,
1831 - their types are weak (void *),
1832 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1833 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1834
1835 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1836 For instance:
1837
1838 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1839 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1840 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1841
1842 results in the following signatures:
1843
1844 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1845 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1846
1847 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1848
1849 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1850 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1851
1852 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1853 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1854 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1855
1856 ** #line in output files
1857 - --no-line works properly.
1858
1859 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1860 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1861 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1862 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1863 \f
1864 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1865
1866 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1867
1868 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1869
1870 ** GLR parsers
1871 Fix spurious parse errors.
1872
1873 ** Pure parsers
1874 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1875 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1876
1877 ** Type Clashes
1878 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1879 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1880
1881 untyped: ... typed;
1882
1883 but the converse remains an error:
1884
1885 typed: ... untyped;
1886
1887 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1888 The following code:
1889
1890 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1891
1892 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1893 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1894 \f
1895 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1896
1897 ** GLR parsing
1898 The declaration
1899 %glr-parser
1900 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1901 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1902 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1903 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1904
1905 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1906 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1907
1908 ** Output Directory
1909 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1910 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1911 now creates "bar.c".
1912
1913 ** Undefined token
1914 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1915 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1916
1917 ** Unknown token numbers
1918 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1919 no longer the case.
1920
1921 ** Error token
1922 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1923 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1924 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1925 will be mapped onto another number.
1926
1927 ** Verbose error messages
1928 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1929 error recovery is possible.
1930
1931 ** End token
1932 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1933
1934 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1935 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1936 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1937 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1938 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1939 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1940 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1941 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1942 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1943
1944 ** Traces
1945 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1946
1947 ** Larger grammars
1948 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1949 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1950 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1951 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1952
1953 ** Explicit initial rule
1954 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1955 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1956 graphs as rule 0.
1957
1958 ** Useless rules
1959 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1960 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1961
1962 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1963 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1964
1965 ** Rules never reduced
1966 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1967 reported.
1968
1969 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1970 On a grammar such as
1971
1972 %token useless useful
1973 %%
1974 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1975
1976 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1977 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1978
1979 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1980 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1981
1982 ** Default locations
1983 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1984 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1985 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1986 the computation of @$.
1987
1988 ** Token end-of-file
1989 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1990 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1991 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1992 For instance
1993 %token MYEOF 0
1994 or
1995 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1996
1997 ** Semantic parser
1998 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1999
2000 ** New translations
2001 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2002 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2003
2004 ** Incorrect token definitions
2005 When given
2006 %token 'a' "A"
2007 bison used to output
2008 #define 'a' 65
2009
2010 ** Token definitions as enums
2011 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2012 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2013 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2014
2015 ** Reports
2016 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2017 produces additional information:
2018 - itemset
2019 complete the core item sets with their closure
2020 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2021 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2022 - solved
2023 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2024 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2025 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2026
2027 ** Type clashes
2028 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2029 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2030
2031 %type <foo> bar
2032 %%
2033 bar: '0' {} '0';
2034
2035 This is fixed.
2036
2037 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2038 \f
2039 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2040
2041 ** C Skeleton
2042 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2043 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2044 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2045
2046 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2047 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2048 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2049 kludge will be disabled.
2050
2051 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2052 extended.
2053 \f
2054 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2055
2056 ** File name clashes are detected
2057 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2058 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2059
2060 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2061 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2062 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2063 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2064 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2065 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2066
2067 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2068 many portability hassles.
2069
2070 ** DJGPP support added.
2071
2072 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2073 \f
2074 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2075
2076 ** Fix C++ issues
2077 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2078 under some conditions.
2079
2080 ** Catch invalid @n
2081 As is done with $n.
2082 \f
2083 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2084
2085 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2086
2087 ** Portability fixes
2088
2089 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2090 \f
2091 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2092
2093 ** Many Bug Fixes
2094
2095 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2096 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2097 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2098 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2099 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2100
2101 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2102 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2103 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2104
2105 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2106 problems as on AIX.
2107
2108 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2109
2110 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2111 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2112
2113 ** User Actions
2114 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2115 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2116 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2117
2118 ** Better C++ compliance
2119 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2120 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2121
2122 ** Reduced Grammars
2123 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2124
2125 ** 64 bit hosts
2126 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2127
2128 ** Error messages
2129 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2130
2131 ** %expect
2132 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2133 any warning.
2134
2135 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2136
2137 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2138
2139 ** Swedish translation
2140
2141 ** Parse errors
2142 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2143 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2144 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2145
2146 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2147 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2148 previous allocations were not freed.
2149
2150 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2151 Some newlines were missing.
2152 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2153
2154 ** Fixed conflict report.
2155 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2156
2157 ** %expect
2158 Was not used.
2159 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2160
2161 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2162
2163 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2164
2165 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2166
2167 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2168 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2169
2170 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2171
2172 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2173 New.
2174
2175 ** --output
2176 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2177 \f
2178 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2179
2180 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2181 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2182 argument.
2183
2184 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2185 experiment.
2186
2187 ** Portability fixes.
2188 \f
2189 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2190
2191 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2192 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2193 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2194 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2195
2196 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2197
2198 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2199
2200 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2201
2202 ** Russian translation added.
2203
2204 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2205
2206 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2207
2208 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2209
2210 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2211
2212 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2213
2214 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2215 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2216
2217 ** New directives.
2218 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2219 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2220
2221 ** @$
2222 Automatic location tracking.
2223 \f
2224 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2225
2226 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2227
2228 ** Added NLS.
2229
2230 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2231
2232 ** There is now a FAQ.
2233 \f
2234 * Changes in version 1.27:
2235
2236 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2237 some systems has been fixed.
2238 \f
2239 * Changes in version 1.26:
2240
2241 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2242
2243 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2244
2245 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2246
2247 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2248
2249 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2250
2251 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2252
2253 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2254 not provide alloca().
2255 \f
2256 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2257
2258 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2259 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2260
2261 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2262 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2263 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2264
2265 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2266 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2267 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2268 purposes.
2269
2270 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2271 directives in the parser file.
2272
2273 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2274 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2275
2276 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2277 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2278 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2279 a switch statement body.
2280 \f
2281 * Changes in version 1.23:
2282
2283 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2284 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2285 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2286 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2287
2288 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2289 \f
2290 * Changes in version 1.22:
2291
2292 --help option added.
2293 \f
2294 * Changes in version 1.20:
2295
2296 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2297
2298 -----
2299
2300 Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2301
2302 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2303
2304 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2305 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2306 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2307 (at your option) any later version.
2308
2309 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2310 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2311 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2312 GNU General Public License for more details.
2313
2314 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2315 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2316
2317 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2318 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2319 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2320 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2321 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2322 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2323 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2324 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2325 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2326 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2327 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2328 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2329 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2330 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2331 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2332 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2333 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2334 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2335 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts
2336
2337 Local Variables:
2338 mode: outline
2339 fill-column: 76
2340 End: