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