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1 GNU Bison NEWS
2
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
4
5 ** Incompatible changes
6
7 *** Obsolete features
8
9 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2).
10 Support for yystype and yyltype (instead of YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE)
11 is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875).
12 Support for YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875).
13
14 ** Warnings
15
16 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
17
18 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
19 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
20 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
21
22 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
23 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
24 errors (and only those):
25
26 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
27
28 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
29 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
30
31 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
32
33 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
34
35 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
36 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
37
38 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
39 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
40 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
41
42 *** The display of warnings is now richer
43
44 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
45
46 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
47
48 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
49 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
50 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
51
52 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
53 with failure):
54
55 bison: warnings being treated as errors
56 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
57
58 it now reports:
59
60 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
61
62 *** Deprecated constructs
63
64 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
65 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
66 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
67
68 *** Useless semantic types
69
70 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
71 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
72 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
73 types that trigger the warning:
74
75 %token <type1> term
76 %type <type2> nterm
77 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
78 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
79 %%
80 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
81
82 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
83 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
84
85 *** Undefined but unused symbols
86
87 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
88 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
89
90 %printer {} symbol1
91 %destructor {} symbol2
92 %type <type> symbol3
93 %%
94 exp: "a";
95
96 *** Useless destructors or printers
97
98 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
99 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
100 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
101 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
102
103 %token <type1> token1
104 <type2> token2
105 <type3> token3
106 <type4> token4
107 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
108 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
109
110 *** Conflicts
111
112 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
113 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
114
115 %glr-parser
116 %%
117 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
118
119 compare the previous version of bison:
120
121 $ bison foo.y
122 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
123 $ bison -Werror foo.y
124 bison: warnings being treated as errors
125 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
126
127 with the new behavior:
128
129 $ bison foo.y
130 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
131 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
132 $ bison -Werror foo.y
133 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
134 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
135
136 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
137
138 %expect 0
139 %glr-parser
140 %%
141 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
142
143 Former behavior:
144
145 $ bison bar.y
146 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
147 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
148 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
149
150 New one:
151
152 $ bison bar.y
153 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
154 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
155
156 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
157
158 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
159 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
160 or more arguments. Instead of
161
162 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
163 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
164 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
165 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
166
167 one may now declare
168
169 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
170
171 ** Java skeleton improvements
172
173 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
174 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
175 and "%define init_throws".
176
177 ** C++ skeletons improvements
178
179 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
180
181 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
182 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
183 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
184
185 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
186
187 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
188
189 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
190
191 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
192 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
193 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
194 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
195 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
196 factory invoked by the user actions).
197
198 ** Variable api.token.prefix
199
200 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
201 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
202 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
203
204 %token FILE for ERROR
205 %define api.token.prefix "TOK_"
206 %%
207 start: FILE for ERROR;
208
209 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
210 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
211 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
212 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
213
214 ** Renamed %define variables
215
216 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
217 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
218
219 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
220 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
221 namespace -> api.namespace
222
223 ** Variable parse.error
224
225 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
226 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
227 verbose".
228
229 ** Semantic predicates
230
231 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
232 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
233 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
234 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
235 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
236 expressions.
237
238 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
239
240 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
241 reduce/reduce conflicts.
242
243 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
244
245 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
246
247 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The --language
248 option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
249
250 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
251
252 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
253 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser resulted
254 in an yyerror function that did not take a location as a parameter. With this
255 new value, the user may request a better pure parser, where yyerror does take
256 a location as a parameter (in location-tracking parsers).
257
258 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
259 "%define api.pure full".
260
261 ** Changes in the format of error messages
262
263 This used to be the format of many error reports:
264
265 foo.y:5.10-24: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
266 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
267
268 It is now:
269
270 foo.y:5.10-25: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
271 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
272
273 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
274
275 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
276 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
277 before re-throwing the exception.
278
279 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
280 appreciated.
281
282 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
283
284 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
285 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
286 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
287 then responsible to define her type.
288
289 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
290 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
291 them.
292
293 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
294 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
295 compatibility).
296
297 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
298 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
299 api.position.type.
300
301 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
302
303 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
304 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
305 numbered and left-justified.
306
307 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
308 diamond shaped nodes.
309
310 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
311 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
312
313 Two nodes were added to the documentation: Xml and Graphviz.
314
315 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
316
317 ** Bug fixes
318
319 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
320
321 ** Documentation
322
323 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
324 have been fixed and extended.
325
326 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
327
328 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
329 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
330 reporting them to us.
331
332 ** Bug fixes
333
334 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
335 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
336 3.2.
337
338 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
339
340 Nul characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
341
342 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
343 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
344
345 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
346
347 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
348
349 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
350
351 ** Bug fixes
352
353 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
354
355 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
356 users to the appropriate place to report them.
357
358 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
359
360 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
361 generated, are removed.
362
363 All the generated headers are self-contained.
364
365 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
366
367 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
368 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
369 For instance the header generated from
370
371 %define api.prefix "calc"
372 %defines "lib/parse.h"
373
374 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
375
376 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
377
378 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
379 warnings such as:
380
381 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
382 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
383 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
384 *++yyvsp = yylval;
385 ^
386
387 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
388
389 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
390 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
391 addressed.
392
393 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
394
395 ** Bug fixes
396
397 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
398 suite have been fixed.
399
400 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
401
402 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
403 invalid C++. This is fixed.
404
405 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
406
407 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
408
409 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
410
411 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
412
413 ** Future Changes
414
415 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
416 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
417 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
418
419 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
420
421 write:
422
423 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
424
425 ** Bug fixes
426
427 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
428
429 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
430
431 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
432
433 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
434 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
435 now does.
436
437 ** Type names in actions
438
439 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
440 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
441
442 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
443
444 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
445 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
446
447 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
448
449 ** Future changes
450
451 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
452 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
453
454 *** K&R C parsers
455
456 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
457 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
458 compilers.
459
460 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
461
462 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
463 YYLTYPE.
464
465 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
466 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
467
468 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
469 %error-verbose.
470
471 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
472
473 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
474 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
475 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
476 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
477 it.
478
479 ** Generated Parser Headers
480
481 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
482
483 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
484 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
485
486 #ifndef YY_FOO_H
487 # define YY_FOO_H
488 ...
489 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
490
491 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
492
493 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
494 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
495
496 int bar_parse (void);
497
498 rather than
499
500 #define yyparse bar_parse
501 int yyparse (void);
502
503 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
504 single compilation unit.
505
506 *** Exported symbols in C++
507
508 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
509 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
510 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
511
512 *** YYLSP_NEEDED
513
514 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
515 longer defined.
516
517 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
518
519 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
520 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
521 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
522 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
523 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
524 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
525 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
526
527 The following examples compares both:
528
529 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
530 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
531 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
532 %% %%
533 exp: 'a'; exp: 'a';
534
535 bison generates:
536
537 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
538 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
539
540 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
541 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
542 > # if defined YYDEBUG
543 > # if YYDEBUG
544 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
545 > # else
546 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
547 > # endif
548 > # else
549 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
550 > # endif
551 # endif | # endif
552
553 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
554 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
555 # endif # endif
556
557 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
558 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
559 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
560 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
561 FOO = 258 FOO = 258
562 }; };
563 # endif # endif
564
565 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
566 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
567 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
568 { {
569 int ival; int ival;
570 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
571 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
572 #endif #endif
573
574 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
575
576 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
577
578 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
579
580 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
581
582 ** Future changes:
583
584 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
585
586 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
587
588 ** glr.c improvements:
589
590 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
591
592 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
593 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
594
595 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
596
597 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
598 when -std is passed to GCC).
599
600 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
601
602 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
603 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
604
605 ** Changes for C++:
606
607 *** C++11 compatibility:
608
609 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
610 or higher.
611
612 *** Header guards
613
614 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
615 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
616
617 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
618 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
619 ...
620 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
621
622 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
623 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
624 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
625
626 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
627
628 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
629 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
630 ...
631 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
632
633 *** C++ locations:
634
635 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
636 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
637 documentation were fixed.
638
639 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
640
641 ** Changes in the manual:
642
643 *** %printer is documented
644
645 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
646 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
647
648 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
649 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
650
651 *** Several improvements have been made:
652
653 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
654 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
655 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
656 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
657
658 ** Building bison:
659
660 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
661
662 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
663 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
664
665 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
666
667 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
668
669 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
670 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
671
672 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
673
674 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
675 halts in the middle of its course.
676
677 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
678
679 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
680
681 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
682 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
683 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
684 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
685 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
686
687 ** Named references:
688
689 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
690 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
691 actions code.
692
693 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
694 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
695 as named references:
696
697 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
698 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
699
700 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
701
702 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
703 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
704
705 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
706 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
707 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
708
709 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
710 will help to stabilize them.
711
712 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
713
714 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
715 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
716 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
717 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
718 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
719 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
720 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
721 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
722 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
723
724 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
725 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
726 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
727 file with these directives:
728
729 %define lr.type lalr
730 %define lr.type ielr
731 %define lr.type canonical-lr
732
733 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
734 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
735 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
736 manual.
737
738 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
739 stabilize them.
740
741 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
742
743 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
744 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
745 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
746 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
747 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
748 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
749 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
750 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
751 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
752 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
753 tokens.
754
755 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
756 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
757 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
758 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
759 inconsistent states.
760
761 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
762 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
763 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
764 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
765 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
766 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
767 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
768 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
769 power.
770
771 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
772 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
773
774 %define parse.lac full
775
776 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
777 details including a few caveats.
778
779 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
780 stabilize it.
781
782 ** %define improvements:
783
784 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
785
786 Each of these command-line options
787
788 -D NAME[=VALUE]
789 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
790
791 -F NAME[=VALUE]
792 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
793
794 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
795
796 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
797
798 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
799 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
800 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
801 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
802
803 *** Variables renamed:
804
805 The following %define variables
806
807 api.push_pull
808 lr.keep_unreachable_states
809
810 have been renamed to
811
812 api.push-pull
813 lr.keep-unreachable-states
814
815 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
816 for backward compatibility.
817
818 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
819
820 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
821 within quotations marks. For example,
822
823 %define api.push-pull "push"
824
825 can be rewritten as
826
827 %define api.push-pull push
828
829 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
830
831 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
832
833 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
834
835 ** Character literals not of length one:
836
837 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
838 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
839 the following grammar to be the same token:
840
841 exp: exp '++'
842 | exp '+' exp
843 ;
844
845 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
846 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
847
848 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
849
850 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
851 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
852 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
853 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
854
855 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
856
857 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
858 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
859 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
860 and "last" members, instead of
861
862 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
863 do \
864 if (N) \
865 { \
866 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
867 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
868 } \
869 else \
870 { \
871 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
872 } \
873 while (false)
874
875 use:
876
877 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
878 do \
879 if (N) \
880 { \
881 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
882 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
883 } \
884 else \
885 { \
886 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
887 } \
888 while (false)
889
890 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
891
892 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
893 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
894 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
895 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
896
897 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
898
899 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
900 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
901 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
902 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
903 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
904 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
905 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
906 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
907
908 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
909
910 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
911 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
912 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
913 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
914
915 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
916
917 instead of
918
919 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
920
921 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
922 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
923 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
924 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
925 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
926 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
927 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
928
929 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
930
931 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
932 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
933 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
934 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
935 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
936
937 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
938 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
939 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
940 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
941 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
942 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
943 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
944 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
945 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
946 shifted or discarded.
947
948 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
949 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
950 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
951 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
952
953 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
954 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
955 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
956 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
957 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
958 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
959 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
960 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
961 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
962 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
963 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
964 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
965 by default.
966
967 ** Java skeleton fixes:
968
969 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
970
971 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
972 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
973
974 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
975
976 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
977
978 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
979
980 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
981 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
982
983 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
984
985 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
986
987 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
988 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
989 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
990 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
991 example:
992
993 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
994 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
995 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
996 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
997
998 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
999 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1000 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1001 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1002
1003 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1004
1005 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1006 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1007
1008 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1009
1010 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1011
1012 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1013 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1014 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1015 suppress all warnings:
1016
1017 bison -Wnone gram.y
1018
1019 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1020
1021 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1022 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1023 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1024
1025 %left END 0
1026
1027 This bug has been fixed.
1028
1029 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1030
1031 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1032 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1033
1034 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1035 been fixed.
1036
1037 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1038
1039 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1040 been fixed.
1041
1042 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1043 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1044 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1045 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1046
1047 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1048
1049 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1050
1051 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1052 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1053 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1054 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1055 affected platforms.
1056
1057 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1058
1059 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1060 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1061 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1062 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1063 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1064 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1065 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1066 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1067 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1068
1069 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1070
1071 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1072 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1073 avoided.
1074
1075 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1076
1077 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1078
1079 %{CODE%}
1080
1081 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1082 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1083
1084 %code {CODE}
1085 %code requires {CODE}
1086 %code provides {CODE}
1087 %code top {CODE}
1088
1089 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1090 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1091 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1092 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1093 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1094
1095 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1096 is still considered experimental.
1097
1098 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1099
1100 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1101 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1102 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1103 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1104 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1105 specified by POSIX.
1106
1107 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1108 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1109 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1110 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1111 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1112 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1113 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1114
1115 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1116
1117 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1118 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1119 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1120 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1121 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1122 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1123 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1124 be removed altogether.
1125
1126 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1127 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1128 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1129 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1130 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1131 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1132 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1133 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1134 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1135 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1136
1137 ** Internationalization.
1138
1139 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1140 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1141 host system.
1142
1143 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1144
1145 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1146 declarations have been fixed.
1147
1148 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1149
1150 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1151 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1152
1153 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1154
1155 instead of
1156
1157 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1158
1159 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1160 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1161 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1162 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1163 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1164 feature.
1165
1166 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1167
1168 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1169
1170 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1171
1172 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1173 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1174 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1175 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1176 in future releases.
1177
1178 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1179
1180 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1181 fixed.
1182
1183 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1184
1185 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1186 are now deprecated:
1187
1188 %define NAME "VALUE"
1189
1190 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1191
1192 %define api.pure
1193
1194 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1195 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1196
1197 ** Push Parsing
1198
1199 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1200 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1201 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1202 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1203 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1204
1205 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1206 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1207
1208 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1209
1210 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1211 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1212
1213 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1214 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1215 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1216
1217 ** Java
1218
1219 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1220 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1221 %skeleton to select it.
1222
1223 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1224
1225 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1226 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1227
1228 ** %language
1229
1230 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1231 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1232 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1233 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1234
1235 ** XML Automaton Report
1236
1237 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1238 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1239 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1240
1241 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1242 %defines. For example:
1243
1244 %defines "parser.h"
1245
1246 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1247 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1248 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1249 instead of "unused".
1250
1251 ** Unreachable State Removal
1252
1253 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1254 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1255 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1256
1257 1. Removes unreachable states.
1258
1259 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1260 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1261 directives in existing grammar files.
1262
1263 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1264 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1265
1266 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1267
1268 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1269
1270 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1271 for further discussion.
1272
1273 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1274
1275 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1276 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1277 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1278 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1279 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1280 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1281 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1282 code.
1283
1284 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1285 name.
1286
1287 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1288 deprecated:
1289
1290 %file-prefix "parser"
1291 %name-prefix "c_"
1292 %output "parser.c"
1293
1294 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1295
1296 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1297 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1298 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1299 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1300 it:
1301
1302 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1303 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1304 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1305 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1306
1307 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1308 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1309 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1310 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1311
1312 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1313 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1314
1315 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1316
1317 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1318 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1319 about unused $2 in:
1320
1321 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1322
1323 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1324 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1325
1326 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1327
1328 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1329 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1330 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1331
1332 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1333 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1334
1335 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1336
1337 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1338 %printer's:
1339
1340 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1341 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1342 declared semantic type tags.
1343
1344 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1345 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1346 type tags.
1347
1348 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1349 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1350 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1351 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1352
1353 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1354 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1355 features.
1356
1357 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1358 details.
1359
1360 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1361 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1362 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1363
1364 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1365 completely removed from Bison.
1366
1367 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1368
1369 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1370 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1371 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1372 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1373 and is required by POSIX.
1374
1375 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1376 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1377
1378 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1379
1380 For example:
1381
1382 %union { char *string; }
1383 %token <string> STRING1
1384 %token <string> STRING2
1385 %type <string> string1
1386 %type <string> string2
1387 %union { char character; }
1388 %token <character> CHR
1389 %type <character> chr
1390 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1391 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1392 %destructor { } <character>
1393
1394 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1395 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1396 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1397 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1398 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1399
1400 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1401 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1402 future versions.]
1403
1404 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1405 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1406 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1407 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1408 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1409
1410 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1411 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1412
1413 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1414 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1415 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1416 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1417 declared after the first %union.
1418
1419 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1420 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1421 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1422 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1423 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1424 after the token definitions.
1425
1426 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1427 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1428
1429 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1430 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1431 %after-header.
1432
1433 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1434 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1435 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1436 convenient for you:
1437
1438 %before-header {
1439 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1440 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1441 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1442 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1443 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1444 }
1445 %start-header {
1446 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1447 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1448 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1449 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1450 }
1451 %union {
1452 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1453 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1454 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1455 }
1456 %end-header {
1457 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1458 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1459 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1460 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1461 * definitions. */
1462 }
1463 %after-header {
1464 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1465 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1466 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1467 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1468 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1469 }
1470
1471 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1472 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1473
1474 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1475 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1476
1477 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1478 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1479 in a future release.
1480
1481 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1482
1483 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1484 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1485
1486 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1487 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1488
1489 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1490
1491 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1492 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1493 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1494
1495 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1496
1497 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1498
1499 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1500 their contents together.
1501
1502 ** New warning: unused values
1503 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1504 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1505
1506 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1507 | exp "+" exp
1508 ;
1509
1510 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1511 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1512 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1513
1514 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1515 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1516 | exp "+" exp
1517 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1518 ;
1519
1520 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1521 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1522 values are used, e.g.:
1523
1524 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1525 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1526 ;
1527
1528 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1529 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1530
1531 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1532
1533 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1534 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1535
1536 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1537 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1538 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1539 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1540
1541 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1542 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1543 instead of warnings.
1544
1545 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1546 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1547 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1548
1549 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1550
1551 ** %require "VERSION"
1552 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1553 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1554
1555 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1556 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1557 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1558 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1559 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1560
1561 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1562 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1563 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1564 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1565
1566 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1567 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1568
1569 ** DJGPP support added.
1570 \f
1571 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1572
1573 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1574
1575 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1576 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1577 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1578 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1579 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1580 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1581
1582 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1583 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1584 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1585 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1586
1587 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1588 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1589 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1590
1591 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1592 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1593 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1594 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1595 unexpected "number"'.
1596 \f
1597 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1598
1599 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1600
1601 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1602 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1603 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1604 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1605 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1606
1607 - Error token location.
1608 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1609 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1610 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1611 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1612
1613 - Semicolon changes:
1614 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1615 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1616
1617 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1618 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1619 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1620 forget a closing quote.
1621
1622 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1623
1624 ** New features
1625
1626 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1627
1628 - New directive: %initial-action.
1629 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1630 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1631
1632 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1633 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1634
1635 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1636 This is a GNU extension.
1637
1638 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1639 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1640
1641 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1642
1643 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1644 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1645
1646 ** Bug fixes
1647
1648 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1649 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1650 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1651 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1652 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1653 these violations will become errors again.
1654
1655 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1656 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1657
1658 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1659 \f
1660 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1661
1662 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1663 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1664
1665 ** syntax error processing
1666
1667 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1668 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1669
1670 - %destructor
1671 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1672 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1673
1674 - %error-verbose
1675 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1676
1677 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1678 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1679
1680 ** POSIX conformance
1681
1682 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1683 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1684 compatibility with Yacc.
1685
1686 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1687 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1688 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1689 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1690 be consistent.
1691
1692 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1693 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1694
1695 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1696 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1697
1698 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1699 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1700
1701 - Yacc command and library now available
1702 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1703 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1704 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1705 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1706
1707 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1708
1709 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1710 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1711 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1712
1713 ** Other compatibility issues
1714
1715 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1716 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1717 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1718 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1719 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1720 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1721
1722 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1723 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1724
1725 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1726 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1727
1728 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1729 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1730 withdrawn in a future release.
1731
1732 ** GLR parser notes
1733
1734 - GLR and inline
1735 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1736 C keyword "inline".
1737
1738 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1739 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1740
1741 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1742 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1743 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1744 shortcomings:
1745
1746 - a single argument only can be added,
1747 - their types are weak (void *),
1748 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1749 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1750
1751 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1752 For instance:
1753
1754 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1755 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1756 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1757
1758 results in the following signatures:
1759
1760 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1761 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1762
1763 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1764
1765 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1766 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1767
1768 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1769 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1770 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1771
1772 ** #line in output files
1773 - --no-line works properly.
1774
1775 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1776 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1777 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1778 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1779 \f
1780 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1781
1782 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1783
1784 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1785
1786 ** GLR parsers
1787 Fix spurious parse errors.
1788
1789 ** Pure parsers
1790 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1791 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1792
1793 ** Type Clashes
1794 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1795 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1796
1797 untyped: ... typed;
1798
1799 but the converse remains an error:
1800
1801 typed: ... untyped;
1802
1803 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1804 The following code:
1805
1806 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1807
1808 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1809 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1810 \f
1811 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1812
1813 ** GLR parsing
1814 The declaration
1815 %glr-parser
1816 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1817 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1818 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1819 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1820
1821 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1822 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1823
1824 ** Output Directory
1825 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1826 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1827 now creates "bar.c".
1828
1829 ** Undefined token
1830 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1831 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1832
1833 ** Unknown token numbers
1834 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1835 no longer the case.
1836
1837 ** Error token
1838 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1839 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1840 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1841 will be mapped onto another number.
1842
1843 ** Verbose error messages
1844 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1845 error recovery is possible.
1846
1847 ** End token
1848 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1849
1850 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1851 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1852 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1853 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1854 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1855 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1856 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1857 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1858 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1859
1860 ** Traces
1861 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1862
1863 ** Larger grammars
1864 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1865 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1866 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1867 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1868
1869 ** Explicit initial rule
1870 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1871 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1872 graphs as rule 0.
1873
1874 ** Useless rules
1875 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1876 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1877
1878 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1879 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1880
1881 ** Rules never reduced
1882 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1883 reported.
1884
1885 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1886 On a grammar such as
1887
1888 %token useless useful
1889 %%
1890 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1891
1892 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1893 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1894
1895 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1896 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1897
1898 ** Default locations
1899 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1900 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1901 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1902 the computation of @$.
1903
1904 ** Token end-of-file
1905 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1906 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1907 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1908 For instance
1909 %token MYEOF 0
1910 or
1911 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1912
1913 ** Semantic parser
1914 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1915
1916 ** New translations
1917 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1918 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1919
1920 ** Incorrect token definitions
1921 When given
1922 %token 'a' "A"
1923 bison used to output
1924 #define 'a' 65
1925
1926 ** Token definitions as enums
1927 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1928 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1929 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1930
1931 ** Reports
1932 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1933 produces additional information:
1934 - itemset
1935 complete the core item sets with their closure
1936 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1937 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1938 - solved
1939 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1940 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1941 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1942
1943 ** Type clashes
1944 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1945 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1946
1947 %type <foo> bar
1948 %%
1949 bar: '0' {} '0';
1950
1951 This is fixed.
1952
1953 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1954 \f
1955 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1956
1957 ** C Skeleton
1958 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1959 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1960 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1961
1962 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1963 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1964 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1965 kludge will be disabled.
1966
1967 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1968 extended.
1969 \f
1970 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1971
1972 ** File name clashes are detected
1973 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1974 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1975
1976 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1977 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1978 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1979 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1980 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1981 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1982
1983 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1984 many portability hassles.
1985
1986 ** DJGPP support added.
1987
1988 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
1989 \f
1990 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1991
1992 ** Fix C++ issues
1993 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1994 under some conditions.
1995
1996 ** Catch invalid @n
1997 As is done with $n.
1998 \f
1999 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2000
2001 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2002
2003 ** Portability fixes
2004
2005 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2006 \f
2007 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2008
2009 ** Many Bug Fixes
2010
2011 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2012 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2013 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2014 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2015 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2016
2017 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2018 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2019 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2020
2021 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2022 problems as on AIX.
2023
2024 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2025
2026 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2027 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2028
2029 ** User Actions
2030 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2031 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2032 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2033
2034 ** Better C++ compliance
2035 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2036 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2037
2038 ** Reduced Grammars
2039 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2040
2041 ** 64 bit hosts
2042 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2043
2044 ** Error messages
2045 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2046
2047 ** %expect
2048 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2049 any warning.
2050
2051 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2052
2053 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2054
2055 ** Swedish translation
2056
2057 ** Parse errors
2058 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2059 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2060 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2061
2062 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2063 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2064 previous allocations were not freed.
2065
2066 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2067 Some newlines were missing.
2068 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2069
2070 ** Fixed conflict report.
2071 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2072
2073 ** %expect
2074 Was not used.
2075 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2076
2077 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2078
2079 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2080
2081 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2082
2083 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2084 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2085
2086 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2087
2088 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2089 New.
2090
2091 ** --output
2092 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2093 \f
2094 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2095
2096 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2097 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2098 argument.
2099
2100 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2101 experiment.
2102
2103 ** Portability fixes.
2104 \f
2105 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2106
2107 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2108 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2109 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2110 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2111
2112 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2113
2114 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2115
2116 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2117
2118 ** Russian translation added.
2119
2120 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2121
2122 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2123
2124 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2125
2126 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2127
2128 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2129
2130 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2131 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2132
2133 ** New directives.
2134 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2135 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2136
2137 ** @$
2138 Automatic location tracking.
2139 \f
2140 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2141
2142 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2143
2144 ** Added NLS.
2145
2146 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2147
2148 ** There is now a FAQ.
2149 \f
2150 * Changes in version 1.27:
2151
2152 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2153 some systems has been fixed.
2154 \f
2155 * Changes in version 1.26:
2156
2157 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2158
2159 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2160
2161 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2162
2163 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2164
2165 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2166
2167 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2168
2169 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2170 not provide alloca().
2171 \f
2172 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2173
2174 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2175 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2176
2177 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2178 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2179 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2180
2181 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2182 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2183 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2184 purposes.
2185
2186 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2187 directives in the parser file.
2188
2189 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2190 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2191
2192 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2193 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2194 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2195 a switch statement body.
2196 \f
2197 * Changes in version 1.23:
2198
2199 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2200 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2201 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2202 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2203
2204 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2205 \f
2206 * Changes in version 1.22:
2207
2208 --help option added.
2209 \f
2210 * Changes in version 1.20:
2211
2212 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2213
2214 -----
2215
2216 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2217
2218 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2219
2220 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2221 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2222 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2223 (at your option) any later version.
2224
2225 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2226 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2227 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2228 GNU General Public License for more details.
2229
2230 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2231 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2232
2233 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2234 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2235 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2236 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2237 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2238 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2239 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2240 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2241 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2242 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2243 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2244 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2245 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2246 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2247 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2248 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2249 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2250 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2251 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts
2252
2253 Local Variables:
2254 mode: outline
2255 fill-column: 76
2256 End: