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