3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 Bugs in the test suite have been fixed.
9 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
10 users to the appropriate place to report them.
12 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
14 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
15 generated, are removed.
17 ** Changes in the format of errors and exceptions output
19 This used to be the format of many error reports:
21 foo.y:5.10-24: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
22 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
26 foo.y:5.10-25: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
27 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
29 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
33 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
34 suite have been fixed.
36 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
38 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
39 invalid C++. This is fixed.
41 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
43 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
45 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
47 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
51 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
52 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
53 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
55 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
59 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
63 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
65 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
67 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
69 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
70 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
73 ** Type names in actions
75 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
76 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
78 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
80 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
81 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
83 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
87 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
88 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
92 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
93 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
96 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
98 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
101 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
102 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
104 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
107 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
109 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
110 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
111 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
112 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
115 ** Generated Parser Headers
117 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
119 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
120 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
125 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
127 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
129 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
130 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
132 int bar_parse (void);
136 #define yyparse bar_parse
139 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
140 single compilation unit.
142 *** Exported symbols in C++
144 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
145 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
146 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
150 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
153 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
155 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
156 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
157 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
158 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
159 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
160 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
161 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
163 The following examples compares both:
165 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
166 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
167 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
173 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
174 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
176 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
177 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
178 > # if defined YYDEBUG
180 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
182 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
185 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
189 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
190 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
193 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
194 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
195 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
196 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
201 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
202 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
203 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
206 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
207 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
210 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
212 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
214 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
216 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
220 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
222 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
224 ** glr.c improvements:
226 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
228 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
229 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
231 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
233 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
234 when -std is passed to GCC).
236 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
238 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
239 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
243 *** C++11 compatibility:
245 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
250 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
251 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
253 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
254 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
256 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
258 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
259 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
260 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
262 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
264 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
265 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
267 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
271 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
272 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
273 documentation were fixed.
275 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
277 ** Changes in the manual:
279 *** %printer is documented
281 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
282 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
284 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
285 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
287 *** Several improvements have been made:
289 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
290 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
291 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
292 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
296 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
298 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
299 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
301 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
303 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
305 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
306 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
308 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
310 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
311 halts in the middle of its course.
313 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
315 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
317 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
318 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
319 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
320 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
321 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
325 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
326 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
329 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
330 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
333 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
334 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
336 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
338 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
339 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
341 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
342 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
343 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
345 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
346 will help to stabilize them.
348 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
350 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
351 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
352 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
353 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
354 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
355 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
356 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
357 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
358 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
360 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
361 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
362 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
363 file with these directives:
367 %define lr.type canonical-lr
369 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
370 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
371 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
374 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
377 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
379 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
380 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
381 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
382 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
383 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
384 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
385 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
386 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
387 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
388 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
391 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
392 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
393 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
394 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
397 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
398 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
399 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
400 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
401 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
402 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
403 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
404 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
407 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
408 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
410 %define parse.lac full
412 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
413 details including a few caveats.
415 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
418 ** %define improvements:
420 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
422 Each of these command-line options
425 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
428 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
430 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
432 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
434 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
435 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
436 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
437 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
439 *** Variables renamed:
441 The following %define variables
444 lr.keep_unreachable_states
449 lr.keep-unreachable-states
451 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
452 for backward compatibility.
454 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
456 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
457 within quotations marks. For example,
459 %define api.push-pull "push"
463 %define api.push-pull push
465 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
467 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
469 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
471 ** Character literals not of length one:
473 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
474 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
475 the following grammar to be the same token:
481 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
482 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
484 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
486 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
487 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
488 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
489 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
491 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
493 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
494 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
495 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
496 and "last" members, instead of
498 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
502 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
503 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
507 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
513 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
517 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
518 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
522 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
526 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
528 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
529 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
530 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
531 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
533 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
535 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
536 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
537 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
538 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
539 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
540 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
541 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
542 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
544 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
546 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
547 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
548 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
549 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
551 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
555 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
557 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
558 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
559 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
560 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
561 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
562 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
563 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
565 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
567 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
568 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
569 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
570 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
571 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
573 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
574 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
575 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
576 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
577 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
578 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
579 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
580 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
581 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
582 shifted or discarded.
584 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
585 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
586 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
587 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
589 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
590 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
591 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
592 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
593 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
594 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
595 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
596 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
597 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
598 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
599 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
600 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
603 ** Java skeleton fixes:
605 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
607 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
608 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
610 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
612 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
614 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
616 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
617 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
619 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
621 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
623 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
624 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
625 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
626 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
629 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
630 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
631 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
632 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
634 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
635 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
636 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
637 then have no effect on the conflict report.
639 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
641 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
642 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
644 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
646 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
648 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
649 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
650 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
651 suppress all warnings:
655 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
657 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
658 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
659 produced an assertion failure. For example:
663 This bug has been fixed.
665 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
667 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
668 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
670 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
673 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
675 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
678 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
679 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
680 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
681 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
683 ** Minor documentation fixes.
685 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
687 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
688 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
689 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
690 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
693 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
695 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
696 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
697 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
698 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
699 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
700 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
701 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
702 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
703 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
705 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
707 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
708 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
711 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
713 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
717 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
718 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
721 %code requires {CODE}
722 %code provides {CODE}
725 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
726 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
727 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
728 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
729 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
731 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
732 is still considered experimental.
734 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
736 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
737 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
738 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
739 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
740 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
743 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
744 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
745 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
746 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
747 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
748 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
749 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
751 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
753 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
754 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
755 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
756 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
757 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
758 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
759 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
760 be removed altogether.
762 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
763 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
764 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
765 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
766 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
767 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
768 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
769 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
770 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
771 2.4.2 is not necessary.
773 ** Internationalization.
775 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
776 message translations were not installed although supported by the
779 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
781 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
782 declarations have been fixed.
784 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
786 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
787 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
789 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
793 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
795 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
796 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
797 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
798 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
799 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
802 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
804 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
806 ** %language is an experimental feature.
808 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
809 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
810 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
811 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
814 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
816 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
819 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
821 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
826 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
830 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
831 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
835 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
836 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
837 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
838 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
839 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
841 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
842 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
844 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
846 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
847 feedback will help to stabilize it.
849 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
850 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
851 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
855 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
856 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
857 %skeleton to select it.
859 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
861 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
862 feedback will help to stabilize it.
866 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
867 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
868 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
869 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
871 ** XML Automaton Report
873 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
874 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
875 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
877 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
878 %defines. For example:
882 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
883 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
884 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
887 ** Unreachable State Removal
889 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
890 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
891 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
893 1. Removes unreachable states.
895 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
896 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
897 directives in existing grammar files.
899 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
900 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
902 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
904 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
906 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
907 for further discussion.
909 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
911 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
912 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
913 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
914 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
915 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
916 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
917 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
920 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
923 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
926 %file-prefix "parser"
930 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
932 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
933 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
934 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
935 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
938 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
939 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
940 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
941 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
943 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
944 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
945 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
946 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
948 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
949 determine whether they should become permanent features.
951 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
953 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
954 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
957 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
959 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
960 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
962 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
964 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
965 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
966 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
968 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
969 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
971 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
973 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
976 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
977 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
978 declared semantic type tags.
980 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
981 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
984 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
985 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
986 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
987 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
989 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
990 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
993 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
996 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
997 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
998 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1000 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1001 completely removed from Bison.
1003 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1005 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1006 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1007 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1008 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1009 and is required by POSIX.
1011 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1012 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1014 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1018 %union { char *string; }
1019 %token <string> STRING1
1020 %token <string> STRING2
1021 %type <string> string1
1022 %type <string> string2
1023 %union { char character; }
1024 %token <character> CHR
1025 %type <character> chr
1026 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1027 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1028 %destructor { } <character>
1030 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1031 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1032 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1033 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1034 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1036 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1037 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1040 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1041 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1042 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1043 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1044 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1046 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1047 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1049 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1050 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1051 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1052 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1053 declared after the first %union.
1055 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1056 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1057 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1058 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1059 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1060 after the token definitions.
1062 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1063 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1065 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1066 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1069 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1070 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1071 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1075 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1076 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1077 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1078 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1079 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1082 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1083 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1084 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1085 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1088 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1089 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1090 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1093 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1094 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1095 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1096 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1100 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1101 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1102 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1103 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1104 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1107 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1108 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1110 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1111 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1113 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1114 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1115 in a future release.
1117 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1119 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1120 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1122 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1123 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1125 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1127 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1128 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1129 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1131 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1133 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1135 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1136 their contents together.
1138 ** New warning: unused values
1139 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1140 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1142 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1146 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1147 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1148 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1150 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1151 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1153 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1156 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1157 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1158 values are used, e.g.:
1160 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1161 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1164 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1165 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1167 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1169 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1170 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1172 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1173 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1174 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1175 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1177 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1178 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1179 instead of warnings.
1181 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1182 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1183 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1185 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1187 ** %require "VERSION"
1188 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1189 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1191 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1192 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1193 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1194 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1195 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1197 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1198 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1199 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1200 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1202 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1203 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1205 ** DJGPP support added.
1207 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1209 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1211 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1212 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1213 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1214 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1215 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1216 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1218 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1219 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1220 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1221 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1223 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1224 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1225 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1227 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1228 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1229 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1230 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1231 unexpected "number"'.
1233 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1235 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1237 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1238 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1239 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1240 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1241 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1243 - Error token location.
1244 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1245 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1246 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1247 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1249 - Semicolon changes:
1250 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1251 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1253 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1254 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1255 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1256 forget a closing quote.
1258 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1262 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1264 - New directive: %initial-action.
1265 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1266 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1268 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1269 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1271 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1272 This is a GNU extension.
1274 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1275 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1277 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1279 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1280 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1284 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1285 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1286 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1287 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1288 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1289 these violations will become errors again.
1291 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1292 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1294 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1296 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1298 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1299 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1301 ** syntax error processing
1303 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1304 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1307 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1308 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1311 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1313 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1314 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1316 ** POSIX conformance
1318 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1319 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1320 compatibility with Yacc.
1322 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1323 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1324 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1325 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1328 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1329 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1331 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1332 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1334 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1335 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1337 - Yacc command and library now available
1338 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1339 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1340 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1341 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1343 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1345 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1346 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1347 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1349 ** Other compatibility issues
1351 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1352 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1353 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1354 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1355 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1356 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1358 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1359 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1361 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1362 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1364 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1365 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1366 withdrawn in a future release.
1371 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1374 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1375 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1377 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1378 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1379 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1382 - a single argument only can be added,
1383 - their types are weak (void *),
1384 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1385 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1387 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1390 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1391 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1392 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1394 results in the following signatures:
1396 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1397 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1399 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1401 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1402 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1404 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1405 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1406 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1408 ** #line in output files
1409 - --no-line works properly.
1411 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1412 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1413 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1414 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1416 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1418 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1420 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1423 Fix spurious parse errors.
1426 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1427 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1430 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1431 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1435 but the converse remains an error:
1439 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1442 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1444 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1445 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1447 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1452 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1453 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1454 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1455 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1457 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1458 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1461 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1462 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1463 now creates "bar.c".
1466 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1467 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1469 ** Unknown token numbers
1470 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1474 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1475 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1476 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1477 will be mapped onto another number.
1479 ** Verbose error messages
1480 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1481 error recovery is possible.
1484 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1486 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1487 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1488 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1489 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1490 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1491 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1492 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1493 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1494 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1497 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1500 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1501 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1502 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1503 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1505 ** Explicit initial rule
1506 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1507 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1511 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1512 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1514 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1515 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1517 ** Rules never reduced
1518 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1521 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1522 On a grammar such as
1524 %token useless useful
1526 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1528 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1529 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1531 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1532 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1534 ** Default locations
1535 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1536 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1537 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1538 the computation of @$.
1540 ** Token end-of-file
1541 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1542 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1543 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1547 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1550 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1553 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1554 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1556 ** Incorrect token definitions
1559 bison used to output
1562 ** Token definitions as enums
1563 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1564 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1565 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1568 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1569 produces additional information:
1571 complete the core item sets with their closure
1572 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1573 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1575 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1576 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1577 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1580 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1581 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1589 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1591 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1594 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1595 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1596 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1598 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1599 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1600 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1601 kludge will be disabled.
1603 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1606 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1608 ** File name clashes are detected
1609 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1610 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1612 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1613 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1614 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1615 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1616 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1617 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1619 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1620 many portability hassles.
1622 ** DJGPP support added.
1624 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
1626 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1629 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1630 under some conditions.
1635 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1637 ** Fix Yacc output file names
1639 ** Portability fixes
1641 ** Italian, Dutch translations
1643 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1647 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
1648 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1649 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1650 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1651 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
1653 ** Use of alloca in parsers
1654 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1655 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1657 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1660 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1662 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1663 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1666 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1667 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1668 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1670 ** Better C++ compliance
1671 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1672 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1675 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1678 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1681 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1684 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1687 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1689 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1691 ** Swedish translation
1694 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1695 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1696 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1698 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1699 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1700 previous allocations were not freed.
1702 ** Fixed verbose output file.
1703 Some newlines were missing.
1704 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1706 ** Fixed conflict report.
1707 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1711 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1713 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1715 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1717 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1719 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1720 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1722 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1724 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1728 New, aliasing "--output-file".
1730 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1732 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
1733 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
1736 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
1739 ** Portability fixes.
1741 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1743 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1744 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1745 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1746 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1748 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
1750 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1752 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
1754 ** Russian translation added.
1756 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
1758 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
1760 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
1762 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
1764 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
1766 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
1767 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
1770 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
1771 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
1774 Automatic location tracking.
1776 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
1778 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
1782 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
1784 ** There is now a FAQ.
1786 * Changes in version 1.27:
1788 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
1789 some systems has been fixed.
1791 * Changes in version 1.26:
1793 ** Bison now uses Automake.
1795 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
1797 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
1799 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
1801 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
1803 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
1805 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
1806 not provide alloca().
1808 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
1810 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
1811 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
1813 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
1814 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
1815 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
1817 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
1818 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
1819 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
1822 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
1823 directives in the parser file.
1825 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
1826 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
1828 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
1829 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
1830 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
1831 a switch statement body.
1833 * Changes in version 1.23:
1835 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
1836 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
1837 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
1838 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
1840 Line numbers in output file corrected.
1842 * Changes in version 1.22:
1844 --help option added.
1846 * Changes in version 1.20:
1848 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
1852 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1854 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
1856 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1857 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1858 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1859 (at your option) any later version.
1861 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1862 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1863 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1864 GNU General Public License for more details.
1866 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1867 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
1869 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
1870 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
1871 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
1872 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
1873 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
1874 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
1875 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
1876 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
1877 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
1878 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
1879 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
1880 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
1881 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
1882 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
1883 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
1884 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
1885 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
1886 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp