3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
6 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.90 (2012-12-07) [beta]
10 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
12 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
14 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The --language
15 option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
17 ** New format for error reports: carets
19 Caret errors have been added to Bison, for example (taken from the
22 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
23 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
25 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
26 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
28 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
29 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
31 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
32 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
35 The default behaviour for now is still not to display these unless explictly
36 asked with -fall of -fcaret. However, in a later release, it will be made the
37 default behavior (but may still be deactivated with -fno-caret).
39 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
41 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
42 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser resulted
43 in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a parameter. With this
44 new value, the user may request a better pure parser, where yyerror does take
45 a location as a parameter (in location-tracking parsers).
47 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
48 "%define api.pure full".
50 ** Changes in the format of error messages
52 This used to be the format of many error reports:
54 foo.y:5.10-24: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
55 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
59 foo.y:5.10-25: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
60 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
62 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
64 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
65 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
66 before re-throwing the exception.
68 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
71 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
73 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
74 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
75 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
76 then responsible to define her type.
78 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
79 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
82 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
83 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
86 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
87 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
90 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
92 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
93 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
94 numbered and left-justified.
96 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
99 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
100 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
102 Two nodes were added to the documentation: Xml and Graphviz.
106 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
107 have been fixed and extended.
109 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
111 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
112 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
113 reporting them to us.
117 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
118 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
121 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
123 Nul characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
125 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
126 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
128 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
130 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
132 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
136 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
138 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
139 users to the appropriate place to report them.
141 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
143 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
144 generated, are removed.
146 All the generated headers are self-contained.
148 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
150 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
151 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
152 For instance the header generated from
154 %define api.prefix "calc"
155 %defines "lib/parse.h"
157 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
159 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
161 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
164 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
165 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
166 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
170 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
172 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
173 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
176 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
180 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
181 suite have been fixed.
183 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
185 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
186 invalid C++. This is fixed.
188 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
190 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
192 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
194 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
198 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
199 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
200 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
202 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
206 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
210 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
212 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
214 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
216 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
217 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
220 ** Type names in actions
222 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
223 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
225 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
227 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
228 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
230 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
234 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
235 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
239 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
240 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
243 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
245 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
248 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
249 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
251 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
254 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
256 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
257 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
258 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
259 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
262 ** Generated Parser Headers
264 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
266 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
267 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
272 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
274 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
276 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
277 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
279 int bar_parse (void);
283 #define yyparse bar_parse
286 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
287 single compilation unit.
289 *** Exported symbols in C++
291 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
292 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
293 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
297 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
300 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
302 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
303 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
304 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
305 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
306 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
307 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
308 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
310 The following examples compares both:
312 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
313 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
314 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
320 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
321 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
323 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
324 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
325 > # if defined YYDEBUG
327 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
329 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
332 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
336 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
337 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
340 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
341 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
342 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
343 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
348 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
349 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
350 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
353 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
354 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
357 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
359 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
361 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
363 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
367 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
369 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
371 ** glr.c improvements:
373 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
375 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
376 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
378 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
380 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
381 when -std is passed to GCC).
383 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
385 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
386 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
390 *** C++11 compatibility:
392 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
397 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
398 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
400 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
401 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
403 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
405 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
406 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
407 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
409 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
411 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
412 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
414 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
418 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
419 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
420 documentation were fixed.
422 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
424 ** Changes in the manual:
426 *** %printer is documented
428 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
429 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
431 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
432 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
434 *** Several improvements have been made:
436 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
437 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
438 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
439 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
443 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
445 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
446 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
448 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
450 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
452 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
453 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
455 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
457 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
458 halts in the middle of its course.
460 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
462 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
464 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
465 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
466 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
467 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
468 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
472 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
473 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
476 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
477 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
480 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
481 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
483 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
485 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
486 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
488 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
489 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
490 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
492 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
493 will help to stabilize them.
495 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
497 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
498 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
499 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
500 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
501 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
502 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
503 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
504 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
505 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
507 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
508 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
509 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
510 file with these directives:
514 %define lr.type canonical-lr
516 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
517 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
518 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
521 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
524 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
526 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
527 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
528 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
529 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
530 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
531 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
532 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
533 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
534 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
535 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
538 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
539 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
540 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
541 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
544 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
545 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
546 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
547 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
548 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
549 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
550 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
551 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
554 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
555 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
557 %define parse.lac full
559 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
560 details including a few caveats.
562 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
565 ** %define improvements:
567 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
569 Each of these command-line options
572 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
575 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
577 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
579 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
581 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
582 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
583 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
584 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
586 *** Variables renamed:
588 The following %define variables
591 lr.keep_unreachable_states
596 lr.keep-unreachable-states
598 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
599 for backward compatibility.
601 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
603 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
604 within quotations marks. For example,
606 %define api.push-pull "push"
610 %define api.push-pull push
612 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
614 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
616 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
618 ** Character literals not of length one:
620 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
621 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
622 the following grammar to be the same token:
628 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
629 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
631 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
633 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
634 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
635 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
636 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
638 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
640 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
641 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
642 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
643 and "last" members, instead of
645 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
649 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
650 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
654 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
660 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
664 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
665 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
669 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
673 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
675 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
676 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
677 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
678 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
680 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
682 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
683 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
684 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
685 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
686 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
687 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
688 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
689 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
691 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
693 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
694 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
695 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
696 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
698 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
702 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
704 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
705 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
706 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
707 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
708 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
709 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
710 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
712 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
714 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
715 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
716 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
717 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
718 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
720 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
721 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
722 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
723 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
724 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
725 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
726 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
727 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
728 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
729 shifted or discarded.
731 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
732 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
733 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
734 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
736 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
737 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
738 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
739 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
740 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
741 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
742 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
743 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
744 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
745 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
746 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
747 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
750 ** Java skeleton fixes:
752 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
754 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
755 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
757 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
759 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
761 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
763 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
764 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
766 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
768 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
770 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
771 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
772 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
773 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
776 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
777 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
778 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
779 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
781 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
782 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
783 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
784 then have no effect on the conflict report.
786 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
788 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
789 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
791 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
793 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
795 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
796 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
797 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
798 suppress all warnings:
802 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
804 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
805 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
806 produced an assertion failure. For example:
810 This bug has been fixed.
812 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
814 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
815 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
817 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
820 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
822 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
825 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
826 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
827 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
828 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
830 ** Minor documentation fixes.
832 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
834 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
835 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
836 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
837 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
840 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
842 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
843 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
844 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
845 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
846 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
847 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
848 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
849 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
850 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
852 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
854 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
855 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
858 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
860 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
864 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
865 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
868 %code requires {CODE}
869 %code provides {CODE}
872 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
873 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
874 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
875 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
876 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
878 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
879 is still considered experimental.
881 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
883 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
884 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
885 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
886 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
887 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
890 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
891 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
892 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
893 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
894 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
895 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
896 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
898 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
900 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
901 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
902 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
903 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
904 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
905 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
906 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
907 be removed altogether.
909 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
910 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
911 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
912 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
913 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
914 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
915 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
916 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
917 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
918 2.4.2 is not necessary.
920 ** Internationalization.
922 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
923 message translations were not installed although supported by the
926 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
928 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
929 declarations have been fixed.
931 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
933 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
934 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
936 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
940 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
942 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
943 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
944 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
945 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
946 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
949 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
951 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
953 ** %language is an experimental feature.
955 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
956 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
957 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
958 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
961 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
963 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
966 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
968 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
973 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
977 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
978 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
982 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
983 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
984 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
985 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
986 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
988 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
989 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
991 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
993 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
994 feedback will help to stabilize it.
996 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
997 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
998 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1002 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1003 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1004 %skeleton to select it.
1006 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1008 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1009 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1013 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1014 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1015 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1016 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1018 ** XML Automaton Report
1020 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1021 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1022 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1024 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1025 %defines. For example:
1029 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1030 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1031 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1032 instead of "unused".
1034 ** Unreachable State Removal
1036 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1037 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1038 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1040 1. Removes unreachable states.
1042 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1043 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1044 directives in existing grammar files.
1046 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1047 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1049 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1051 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1053 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1054 for further discussion.
1056 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1058 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1059 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1060 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1061 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1062 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1063 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1064 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1067 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1070 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1073 %file-prefix "parser"
1077 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1079 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1080 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1081 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1082 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1085 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1086 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1087 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1088 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1090 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1091 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1092 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1093 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1095 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1096 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1098 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1100 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1101 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1104 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1106 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1107 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1109 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1111 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1112 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1113 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1115 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1116 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1118 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1120 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1123 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1124 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1125 declared semantic type tags.
1127 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1128 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1131 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1132 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1133 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1134 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1136 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1137 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1140 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1143 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1144 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1145 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1147 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1148 completely removed from Bison.
1150 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1152 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1153 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1154 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1155 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1156 and is required by POSIX.
1158 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1159 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1161 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1165 %union { char *string; }
1166 %token <string> STRING1
1167 %token <string> STRING2
1168 %type <string> string1
1169 %type <string> string2
1170 %union { char character; }
1171 %token <character> CHR
1172 %type <character> chr
1173 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1174 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1175 %destructor { } <character>
1177 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1178 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1179 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1180 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1181 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1183 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1184 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1187 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1188 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1189 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1190 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1191 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1193 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1194 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1196 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1197 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1198 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1199 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1200 declared after the first %union.
1202 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1203 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1204 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1205 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1206 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1207 after the token definitions.
1209 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1210 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1212 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1213 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1216 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1217 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1218 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1222 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1223 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1224 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1225 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1226 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1229 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1230 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1231 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1232 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1235 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1236 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1237 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1240 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1241 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1242 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1243 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1247 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1248 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1249 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1250 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1251 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1254 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1255 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1257 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1258 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1260 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1261 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1262 in a future release.
1264 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1266 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1267 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1269 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1270 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1272 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1274 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1275 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1276 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1278 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1280 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1282 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1283 their contents together.
1285 ** New warning: unused values
1286 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1287 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1289 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1293 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1294 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1295 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1297 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1298 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1300 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1303 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1304 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1305 values are used, e.g.:
1307 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1308 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1311 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1312 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1314 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1316 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1317 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1319 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1320 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1321 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1322 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1324 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1325 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1326 instead of warnings.
1328 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1329 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1330 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1332 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1334 ** %require "VERSION"
1335 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1336 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1338 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1339 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1340 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1341 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1342 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1344 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1345 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1346 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1347 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1349 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1350 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1352 ** DJGPP support added.
1354 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1356 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1358 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1359 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1360 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1361 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1362 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1363 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1365 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1366 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1367 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1368 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1370 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1371 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1372 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1374 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1375 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1376 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1377 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1378 unexpected "number"'.
1380 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1382 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1384 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1385 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1386 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1387 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1388 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1390 - Error token location.
1391 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1392 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1393 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1394 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1396 - Semicolon changes:
1397 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1398 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1400 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1401 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1402 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1403 forget a closing quote.
1405 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1409 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1411 - New directive: %initial-action.
1412 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1413 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1415 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1416 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1418 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1419 This is a GNU extension.
1421 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1422 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1424 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1426 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1427 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1431 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1432 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1433 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1434 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1435 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1436 these violations will become errors again.
1438 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1439 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1441 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1443 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1445 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1446 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1448 ** syntax error processing
1450 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1451 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1454 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1455 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1458 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1460 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1461 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1463 ** POSIX conformance
1465 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1466 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1467 compatibility with Yacc.
1469 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1470 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1471 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1472 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1475 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1476 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1478 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1479 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1481 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1482 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1484 - Yacc command and library now available
1485 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1486 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1487 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1488 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1490 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1492 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1493 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1494 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1496 ** Other compatibility issues
1498 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1499 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1500 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1501 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1502 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1503 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1505 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1506 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1508 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1509 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1511 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1512 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1513 withdrawn in a future release.
1518 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1521 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1522 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1524 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1525 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1526 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1529 - a single argument only can be added,
1530 - their types are weak (void *),
1531 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1532 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1534 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1537 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1538 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1539 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1541 results in the following signatures:
1543 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1544 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1546 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1548 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1549 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1551 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1552 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1553 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1555 ** #line in output files
1556 - --no-line works properly.
1558 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1559 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1560 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1561 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1563 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1565 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1567 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1570 Fix spurious parse errors.
1573 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1574 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1577 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1578 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1582 but the converse remains an error:
1586 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1589 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1591 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1592 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1594 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1599 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1600 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1601 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1602 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1604 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1605 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1608 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1609 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1610 now creates "bar.c".
1613 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1614 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1616 ** Unknown token numbers
1617 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1621 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1622 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1623 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1624 will be mapped onto another number.
1626 ** Verbose error messages
1627 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1628 error recovery is possible.
1631 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1633 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1634 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1635 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1636 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1637 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1638 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1639 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1640 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1641 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1644 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1647 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1648 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1649 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1650 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1652 ** Explicit initial rule
1653 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1654 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1658 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1659 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1661 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1662 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1664 ** Rules never reduced
1665 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1668 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1669 On a grammar such as
1671 %token useless useful
1673 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1675 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1676 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1678 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1679 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1681 ** Default locations
1682 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1683 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1684 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1685 the computation of @$.
1687 ** Token end-of-file
1688 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1689 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1690 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1694 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1697 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1700 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1701 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1703 ** Incorrect token definitions
1706 bison used to output
1709 ** Token definitions as enums
1710 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1711 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1712 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1715 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1716 produces additional information:
1718 complete the core item sets with their closure
1719 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1720 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1722 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1723 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1724 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1727 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1728 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1736 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1738 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1741 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1742 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1743 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1745 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1746 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1747 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1748 kludge will be disabled.
1750 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1753 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1755 ** File name clashes are detected
1756 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1757 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1759 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1760 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1761 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1762 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1763 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1764 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1766 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1767 many portability hassles.
1769 ** DJGPP support added.
1771 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
1773 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1776 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1777 under some conditions.
1782 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1784 ** Fix Yacc output file names
1786 ** Portability fixes
1788 ** Italian, Dutch translations
1790 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1794 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
1795 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1796 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1797 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1798 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
1800 ** Use of alloca in parsers
1801 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1802 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1804 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1807 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1809 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1810 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1813 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1814 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1815 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1817 ** Better C++ compliance
1818 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1819 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1822 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1825 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1828 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1831 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1834 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1836 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1838 ** Swedish translation
1841 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1842 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1843 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1845 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1846 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1847 previous allocations were not freed.
1849 ** Fixed verbose output file.
1850 Some newlines were missing.
1851 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1853 ** Fixed conflict report.
1854 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1858 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1860 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1862 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1864 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1866 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1867 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1869 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1871 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1875 New, aliasing "--output-file".
1877 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1879 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
1880 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
1883 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
1886 ** Portability fixes.
1888 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1890 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1891 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1892 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1893 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1895 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
1897 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1899 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
1901 ** Russian translation added.
1903 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
1905 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
1907 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
1909 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
1911 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
1913 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
1914 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
1917 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
1918 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
1921 Automatic location tracking.
1923 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
1925 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
1929 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
1931 ** There is now a FAQ.
1933 * Changes in version 1.27:
1935 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
1936 some systems has been fixed.
1938 * Changes in version 1.26:
1940 ** Bison now uses Automake.
1942 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
1944 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
1946 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
1948 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
1950 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
1952 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
1953 not provide alloca().
1955 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
1957 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
1958 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
1960 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
1961 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
1962 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
1964 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
1965 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
1966 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
1969 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
1970 directives in the parser file.
1972 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
1973 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
1975 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
1976 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
1977 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
1978 a switch statement body.
1980 * Changes in version 1.23:
1982 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
1983 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
1984 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
1985 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
1987 Line numbers in output file corrected.
1989 * Changes in version 1.22:
1991 --help option added.
1993 * Changes in version 1.20:
1995 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
1999 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2001 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2003 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2004 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2005 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2006 (at your option) any later version.
2008 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2009 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2010 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2011 GNU General Public License for more details.
2013 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2014 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2016 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2017 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2018 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2019 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2020 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2021 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2022 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2023 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2024 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2025 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2026 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2027 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2028 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2029 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2030 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2031 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2032 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2033 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp calc yyo fval Wmaybe
2034 LocalWords: yyvsp pragmas noreturn java's