3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 *** Generated source files when errors are reported
9 When warnings are issued and -Werror is set, bison would still generate
10 the source files (*.c, *.h...). As a consequence, some runs of "make"
11 could fail the first time, but not the second (as the files were generated
14 This is fixed: bison no longer generates this source files, but, of
15 course, still produces the various reports (*.output, *.xml, etc.).
17 *** %empty is used in reports
19 Empty right-hand sides are denoted by '%empty' in all the reports (text,
20 dot, XML and formats derived from it).
22 *** YYERROR and variants
24 When C++ variant support is enabled, an error triggered via YYERROR, but
25 not caught via error recovery, resulted in a double deletion.
27 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.1 (2013-11-12) [stable]
31 *** Errors in caret diagnostics
33 On some platforms, some errors could result in endless diagnostics.
35 *** Fixes of the -Werror option
37 Options such as "-Werror -Wno-error=foo" were still turning "foo"
38 diagnostics into errors instead of warnings. This is fixed.
40 Actually, for consistency with GCC, "-Wno-error=foo -Werror" now also
41 leaves "foo" diagnostics as warnings. Similarly, with "-Werror=foo
42 -Wno-error", "foo" diagnostics are now errors.
46 As demonstrated in the documentation, one can now leave spaces between
51 The yacc.1 man page is no longer installed if --disable-yacc was
54 *** Fixes in the test suite
56 Bugs and portability issues.
58 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0 (2013-07-25) [stable]
60 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
62 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
63 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
64 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
66 ** Backward incompatible changes
70 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
72 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
73 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
75 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
76 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
78 Missing semicolons at the end of actions are no longer added (as announced
81 *** Use of YACC='bison -y'
83 TL;DR: With Autoconf <= 2.69, pass -Wno-yacc to (AM_)YFLAGS if you use
86 Traditional Yacc generates 'y.tab.c' whatever the name of the input file.
87 Therefore Makefiles written for Yacc expect 'y.tab.c' (and possibly
88 'y.tab.h' and 'y.outout') to be generated from 'foo.y'.
90 To this end, for ages, AC_PROG_YACC, Autoconf's macro to look for an
91 implementation of Yacc, was using Bison as 'bison -y'. While it does
92 ensure compatible output file names, it also enables warnings for
93 incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc. In other words, 'bison -y' triggers
94 warnings for Bison extensions.
96 Autoconf 2.70+ fixes this incompatibility by using YACC='bison -o y.tab.c'
97 (which also generates 'y.tab.h' and 'y.output' when needed).
98 Alternatively, disable Yacc warnings by passing '-Wno-yacc' to your Yacc
99 flags (YFLAGS, or AM_YFLAGS with Automake).
103 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
105 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
106 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
107 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
108 preprocessor expansion:
110 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
112 This is fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
113 identifiers for user-provided variables.
115 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
117 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
118 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
120 *** Warnings about useless %pure-parser/%define api.pure are restored
122 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
124 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
129 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
130 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
131 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
133 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
134 the caret information only. For instance on:
141 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
142 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
146 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
147 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
151 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
153 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
154 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
156 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
158 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
159 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
160 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
162 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
163 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
164 errors (and only those):
166 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
168 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
169 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
171 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
173 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
175 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
176 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
178 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
179 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
180 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
182 *** The display of warnings is now richer
184 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
186 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
188 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
189 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
190 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
192 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
195 bison: warnings being treated as errors
196 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
200 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
202 *** Deprecated constructs
204 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
205 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
206 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
208 *** Useless semantic types
210 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
211 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
212 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
213 types that trigger the warning:
217 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
218 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
220 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
222 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
223 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
225 *** Undefined but unused symbols
227 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
228 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
231 %destructor {} symbol2
236 *** Useless destructors or printers
238 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
239 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
240 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
241 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
243 %token <type1> token1
247 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
248 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
252 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
253 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
257 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
259 compare the previous version of bison:
262 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
263 $ bison -Werror foo.y
264 bison: warnings being treated as errors
265 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
267 with the new behavior:
270 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
271 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
272 $ bison -Werror foo.y
273 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
274 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
276 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
281 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
286 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
287 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
288 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
293 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
294 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
296 ** Incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc
298 The 'yacc' category is no longer part of '-Wall', enable it explicitly
301 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
303 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
304 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
305 or more arguments. Instead of
307 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
308 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
309 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
310 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
314 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
316 ** Types of values for %define variables
318 Bison used to make no difference between '%define foo bar' and '%define
319 foo "bar"'. The former is now called a 'keyword value', and the latter a
320 'string value'. A third kind was added: 'code values', such as '%define
323 Keyword variables are used for fixed value sets, e.g.,
327 Code variables are used for value in the target language, e.g.,
329 %define api.value.type {struct semantic_type}
331 String variables are used remaining cases, e.g. file names.
333 ** Variable api.token.prefix
335 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
336 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
337 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
339 %token FILE for ERROR
340 %define api.token.prefix {TOK_}
342 start: FILE for ERROR;
344 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
345 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
346 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
347 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
349 ** Variable api.value.type
351 This new %define variable supersedes the #define macro YYSTYPE. The use
352 of YYSTYPE is discouraged. In particular, #defining YYSTYPE *and* either
353 using %union or %defining api.value.type results in undefined behavior.
355 Either define api.value.type, or use "%union":
362 %token <ival> INT "integer"
363 %token <sval> STRING "string"
364 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <ival>
365 %destructor { free ($$); } <sval>
368 yylval.ival = 42; return INT;
369 yylval.sval = "42"; return STRING;
371 The %define variable api.value.type supports both keyword and code values.
373 The keyword value 'union' means that the user provides genuine types, not
374 union member names such as "ival" and "sval" above (WARNING: will fail if
375 -y/--yacc/%yacc is enabled).
377 %define api.value.type union
378 %token <int> INT "integer"
379 %token <char *> STRING "string"
380 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <int>
381 %destructor { free ($$); } <char *>
384 yylval.INT = 42; return INT;
385 yylval.STRING = "42"; return STRING;
387 The keyword value variant is somewhat equivalent, but for C++ special
388 provision is made to allow classes to be used (more about this below).
390 %define api.value.type variant
391 %token <int> INT "integer"
392 %token <std::string> STRING "string"
394 Code values (in braces) denote user defined types. This is where YYSTYPE
412 %define api.value.type {struct my_value}
413 %token <u.ival> INT "integer"
414 %token <u.sval> STRING "string"
415 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <u.ival>
416 %destructor { free ($$); } <u.sval>
419 yylval.u.ival = 42; return INT;
420 yylval.u.sval = "42"; return STRING;
422 ** Variable parse.error
424 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
425 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
428 ** Renamed %define variables
430 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
431 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
433 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
434 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
435 namespace -> api.namespace
436 stype -> api.value.type
438 ** Semantic predicates
440 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
442 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
443 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
444 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
445 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
446 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
449 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
451 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
452 reduce/reduce conflicts.
454 ** Tokens are numbered in their order of appearance
456 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
458 With '%token A B', A had a number less than the one of B. However,
459 precedence declarations used to generate a reversed order. This is now
460 fixed, and introducing tokens with any of %token, %left, %right,
461 %precedence, or %nonassoc yields the same result.
463 When mixing declarations of tokens with a litteral character (e.g., 'a')
464 or with an identifier (e.g., B) in a precedence declaration, Bison
465 numbered the litteral characters first. For example
469 would lead to the tokens declared in this order: 'c' 'd' A B. Again, the
470 input order is now preserved.
472 These changes were made so that one can remove useless precedence and
473 associativity declarations (i.e., map %nonassoc, %left or %right to
474 %precedence, or to %token) and get exactly the same output.
476 ** Useless precedence and associativity
478 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
480 When developing and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
481 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
482 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
483 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
484 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
485 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
486 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
488 *** Precedence warning category
490 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
491 useless precedence and associativity directives.
493 *** Useless associativity
495 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
496 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
497 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
498 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
512 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
516 *** Useless precedence
518 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
519 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
520 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
521 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
525 exp: "var" '=' "number";
529 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
533 *** Useless precedence and associativity
535 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
540 exp: "var" '=' "number";
544 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
550 With help from Joel E. Denny and Gabriel Rassoul.
552 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
553 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
554 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
555 %empty. On the following grammar:
565 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
568 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
572 ** Java skeleton improvements
574 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
575 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
576 and "%define init_throws".
577 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
579 The Java skeleton now supports push parsing.
580 Contributed by Dennis Heimbigner.
582 ** C++ skeletons improvements
584 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
586 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
587 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
588 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
590 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
592 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
594 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
596 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
597 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
598 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
599 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
600 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
601 factory invoked by the user actions).
603 *** %define api.value.type variant
605 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
606 from Théophile Ranquet.
608 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
611 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
614 %type <::std::string> item;
615 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
618 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
622 %empty { /* Generates an empty string list. */ }
623 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
627 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
628 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
631 *** %define api.token.constructor
633 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
634 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
635 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
637 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
639 parser::location_type loc = ...;
641 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
643 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
645 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
651 There are operator- and operator-= for 'location'. Negative line/column
652 increments can no longer underflow the resulting value.
654 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7.1 (2013-04-15) [stable]
658 *** Fix compiler attribute portability (yacc.c)
660 With locations enabled, __attribute__ was used unprotected.
662 *** Fix some compiler warnings (lalr1.cc)
664 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
668 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
670 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
672 ** Diagnostics are improved
674 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
676 *** Changes in the format of error messages
678 This used to be the format of many error reports:
680 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
681 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
685 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
686 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
688 *** New format for error reports: carets
690 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
692 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
695 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
701 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
702 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
704 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
705 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
707 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
708 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
710 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
711 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
714 The default behavior for now is still not to display these unless
715 explicitly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
716 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
719 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
721 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
722 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
723 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
724 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
725 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
728 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
729 "%define api.pure full".
731 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
733 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
734 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
735 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
736 then responsible to define her type.
738 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
739 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
742 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
743 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
746 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
747 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
750 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
752 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
753 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
754 before re-throwing the exception.
756 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
759 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
761 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
763 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
764 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
765 numbered and left-justified.
767 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
768 diamond shaped nodes.
770 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
771 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
773 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
775 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
776 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
780 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
781 have been fixed and extended.
783 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
784 were not properly documented.
786 The translation of mid-rule actions is now described.
788 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
790 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
791 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
792 reporting them to us.
796 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
797 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
800 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
802 Null characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
804 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
805 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
807 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
809 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
811 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
815 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
817 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
818 users to the appropriate place to report them.
820 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
822 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
823 generated, are removed.
825 All the generated headers are self-contained.
827 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
829 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
830 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
831 For instance the header generated from
833 %define api.prefix "calc"
834 %defines "lib/parse.h"
836 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
838 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
840 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
843 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
844 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
845 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
849 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
851 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
852 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
855 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
859 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
860 suite have been fixed.
862 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
864 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
865 invalid C++. This is fixed.
867 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
869 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
871 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
873 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
877 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
878 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
879 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
881 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
885 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
889 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
891 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
893 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
895 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
896 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
899 ** Type names in actions
901 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
902 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
904 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
906 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
907 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
909 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
913 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
914 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
918 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
919 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
922 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
924 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
927 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
928 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
930 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
933 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
935 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
936 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
937 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
938 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
941 ** Generated Parser Headers
943 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
945 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
946 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
951 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
953 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
955 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
956 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
958 int bar_parse (void);
962 #define yyparse bar_parse
965 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
966 single compilation unit.
968 *** Exported symbols in C++
970 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
971 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
972 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
976 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
979 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
981 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
982 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
983 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
984 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
985 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
986 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
987 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
989 The following examples compares both:
991 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
992 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
993 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
999 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
1000 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
1002 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
1003 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
1004 > # if defined YYDEBUG
1006 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
1008 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
1011 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
1015 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
1016 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
1019 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
1020 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
1021 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
1022 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
1027 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
1028 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
1029 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
1032 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
1033 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
1036 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
1038 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
1040 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
1042 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
1046 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
1048 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
1050 ** glr.c improvements:
1052 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
1054 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
1055 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
1057 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
1059 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
1060 when -std is passed to GCC).
1062 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
1064 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
1065 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
1069 *** C++11 compatibility:
1071 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
1076 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
1077 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
1079 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
1080 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
1082 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
1084 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
1085 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
1086 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
1088 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
1090 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1091 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1093 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
1097 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
1098 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
1099 documentation were fixed.
1101 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
1103 ** Changes in the manual:
1105 *** %printer is documented
1107 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
1108 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
1110 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
1111 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
1113 *** Several improvements have been made:
1115 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
1116 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
1117 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
1118 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
1122 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
1124 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
1125 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
1127 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
1129 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
1131 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
1132 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
1134 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
1136 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
1137 halts in the middle of its course.
1139 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
1141 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
1143 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
1144 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
1145 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
1146 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
1147 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
1149 ** Named references:
1151 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
1152 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
1155 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
1156 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
1157 as named references:
1159 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
1160 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
1162 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
1164 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
1165 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
1167 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
1168 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
1169 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
1171 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
1172 will help to stabilize them.
1173 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
1175 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
1177 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
1178 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
1179 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
1180 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
1181 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
1182 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
1183 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
1184 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
1185 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
1187 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
1188 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
1189 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
1190 file with these directives:
1192 %define lr.type lalr
1193 %define lr.type ielr
1194 %define lr.type canonical-lr
1196 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
1197 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
1198 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
1201 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1204 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
1206 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
1208 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
1209 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
1210 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
1211 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
1212 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
1213 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
1214 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
1215 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
1216 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
1217 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
1220 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
1221 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
1222 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
1223 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
1224 inconsistent states.
1226 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
1227 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
1228 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
1229 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
1230 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
1231 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
1232 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
1233 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
1236 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
1237 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
1239 %define parse.lac full
1241 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
1242 details including a few caveats.
1244 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
1247 ** %define improvements:
1249 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
1251 Each of these command-line options
1254 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
1257 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
1259 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
1261 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
1263 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
1264 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
1265 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
1266 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
1268 *** Variables renamed:
1270 The following %define variables
1273 lr.keep_unreachable_states
1275 have been renamed to
1278 lr.keep-unreachable-states
1280 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
1281 for backward compatibility.
1283 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
1285 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
1286 within quotations marks. For example,
1288 %define api.push-pull "push"
1292 %define api.push-pull push
1294 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
1296 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
1298 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
1300 ** Character literals not of length one:
1302 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
1303 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
1304 the following grammar to be the same token:
1310 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
1311 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
1313 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
1315 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
1316 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
1317 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
1318 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
1320 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
1322 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
1323 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
1324 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
1325 and "last" members, instead of
1327 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1331 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
1332 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
1336 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
1342 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
1346 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
1347 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
1351 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
1355 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
1357 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
1358 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
1359 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
1360 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
1362 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
1364 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1365 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
1366 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
1367 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
1368 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
1369 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
1370 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
1371 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
1373 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
1375 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
1376 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
1377 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
1378 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
1380 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1384 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1386 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
1387 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
1388 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
1389 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
1390 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
1391 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
1392 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
1394 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
1396 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1397 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
1398 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
1399 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
1400 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
1402 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
1403 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
1404 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
1405 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
1406 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
1407 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
1408 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
1409 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
1410 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
1411 shifted or discarded.
1413 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
1414 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
1415 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
1416 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
1418 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
1419 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
1420 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
1421 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
1422 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
1423 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
1424 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
1425 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
1426 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
1427 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
1428 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
1429 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
1432 ** Java skeleton fixes:
1434 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
1436 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
1437 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
1439 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
1441 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
1443 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
1445 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
1446 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1448 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
1450 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
1452 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
1453 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
1454 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
1455 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
1458 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
1459 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
1460 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
1461 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
1463 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
1464 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
1465 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
1466 then have no effect on the conflict report.
1468 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
1470 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
1471 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
1473 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
1475 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
1477 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
1478 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
1479 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
1480 suppress all warnings:
1484 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
1486 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
1487 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
1488 produced an assertion failure. For example:
1492 This bug has been fixed.
1494 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
1496 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
1497 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
1499 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
1502 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
1504 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
1507 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
1508 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
1509 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
1510 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
1512 ** Minor documentation fixes.
1514 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
1516 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
1517 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
1518 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
1519 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
1522 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
1524 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
1525 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
1526 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
1527 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
1528 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
1529 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
1530 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
1531 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
1532 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
1534 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
1536 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
1537 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
1540 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
1542 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
1546 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
1547 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
1550 %code requires {CODE}
1551 %code provides {CODE}
1554 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
1555 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1556 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
1557 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
1558 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
1560 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
1561 is still considered experimental.
1563 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
1565 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
1566 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
1567 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
1568 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
1569 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
1572 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
1573 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
1574 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
1575 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
1576 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
1577 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
1578 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
1580 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1582 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1583 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1584 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1585 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1586 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1587 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1588 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1589 be removed altogether.
1591 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1592 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1593 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1594 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1595 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1596 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1597 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1598 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1599 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1600 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1602 ** Internationalization.
1604 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1605 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1608 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1610 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1611 declarations have been fixed.
1613 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1615 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1616 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1618 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1622 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1624 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1625 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1626 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1627 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1628 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1631 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1633 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1635 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1637 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1638 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1639 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1640 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1643 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1645 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1648 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1650 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1653 %define NAME "VALUE"
1655 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1659 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1660 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1664 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1665 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1666 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1667 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1668 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1670 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1671 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1673 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1675 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1676 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1678 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1679 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1680 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1684 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1685 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1686 %skeleton to select it.
1688 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1690 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1691 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1692 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
1696 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1697 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1698 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1699 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1701 ** XML Automaton Report
1703 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1704 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1705 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1706 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
1708 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1709 %defines. For example:
1713 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1714 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1715 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1716 instead of "unused".
1718 ** Unreachable State Removal
1720 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1721 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1722 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1724 1. Removes unreachable states.
1726 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1727 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1728 directives in existing grammar files.
1730 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1731 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1733 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1735 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1737 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1738 for further discussion.
1740 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1742 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1743 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1744 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1745 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1746 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1747 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1748 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1751 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1754 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1757 %file-prefix "parser"
1761 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1763 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1764 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1765 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1766 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1769 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1770 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1771 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1772 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1774 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1775 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1776 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1777 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1779 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1780 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1782 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1784 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1785 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1788 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1790 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1791 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1793 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1795 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1796 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1797 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1799 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1800 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1802 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1804 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1807 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1808 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1809 declared semantic type tags.
1811 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1812 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1815 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1816 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1817 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1818 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1820 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1821 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1824 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1827 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1828 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1829 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1831 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1832 completely removed from Bison.
1834 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1836 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1837 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1838 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1839 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1840 and is required by POSIX.
1842 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1843 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1845 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1849 %union { char *string; }
1850 %token <string> STRING1
1851 %token <string> STRING2
1852 %type <string> string1
1853 %type <string> string2
1854 %union { char character; }
1855 %token <character> CHR
1856 %type <character> chr
1857 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1858 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1859 %destructor { } <character>
1861 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1862 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1863 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1864 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1865 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1867 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1868 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1871 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1872 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1873 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1874 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1875 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1877 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1878 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1880 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1881 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1882 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1883 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1884 declared after the first %union.
1886 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1887 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1888 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1889 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1890 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1891 after the token definitions.
1893 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1894 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1896 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1897 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1900 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1901 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1902 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1906 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1907 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1908 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1909 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1910 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1913 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1914 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1915 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1916 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1919 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1920 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1921 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1924 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1925 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1926 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1927 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1931 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1932 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1933 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1934 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1935 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1938 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1939 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1941 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1942 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1944 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1945 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1946 in a future release.
1948 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1950 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1951 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1953 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1954 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1956 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1958 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1959 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1960 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1962 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1964 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1966 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1967 their contents together.
1969 ** New warning: unused values
1970 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1971 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1973 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1977 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1978 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1979 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1981 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1982 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1984 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1987 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1988 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1989 values are used, e.g.:
1991 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1992 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1995 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1996 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1998 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
2000 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
2001 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
2003 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
2004 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
2005 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
2006 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
2008 ** %expect, %expect-rr
2009 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
2010 instead of warnings.
2012 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
2013 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
2014 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
2016 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
2018 ** %require "VERSION"
2019 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
2020 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
2022 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
2023 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
2024 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
2025 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
2026 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
2028 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
2029 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
2030 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
2031 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
2033 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
2034 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
2036 ** DJGPP support added.
2038 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
2040 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
2042 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
2043 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
2044 language is still English. For details, please see the new
2045 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
2046 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
2047 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
2049 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
2050 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
2051 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
2052 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
2054 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
2055 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
2056 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
2058 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
2059 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
2060 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
2061 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
2062 unexpected "number"'.
2064 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
2066 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
2068 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
2069 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
2070 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
2071 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
2072 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
2074 - Error token location.
2075 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
2076 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
2077 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
2078 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
2080 - Semicolon changes:
2081 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
2082 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
2084 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
2085 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
2086 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
2087 forget a closing quote.
2089 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
2093 - GLR grammars now support locations.
2095 - New directive: %initial-action.
2096 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
2097 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
2099 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
2100 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
2102 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
2103 This is a GNU extension.
2105 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
2106 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
2108 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
2110 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
2111 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
2115 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
2116 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
2117 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
2118 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
2119 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
2120 these violations will become errors again.
2122 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
2123 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
2125 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
2127 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
2129 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
2130 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
2132 ** syntax error processing
2134 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
2135 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
2138 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
2139 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
2142 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
2144 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
2145 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
2147 ** POSIX conformance
2149 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
2150 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
2151 compatibility with Yacc.
2153 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
2154 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
2155 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
2156 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
2159 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
2160 declared before use. C99 requires this.
2162 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
2163 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
2165 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
2166 output as "foo\\bar.y".
2168 - Yacc command and library now available
2169 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
2170 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
2171 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
2172 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
2174 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
2176 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
2177 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
2178 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
2180 ** Other compatibility issues
2182 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
2183 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
2184 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
2185 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
2186 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
2187 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
2189 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
2190 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
2192 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
2193 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
2195 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
2196 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
2197 withdrawn in a future release.
2202 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
2205 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
2206 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
2208 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
2209 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
2210 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
2213 - a single argument only can be added,
2214 - their types are weak (void *),
2215 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
2216 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
2218 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
2221 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
2222 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
2223 %parse-param {int *randomness}
2225 results in the following signatures:
2227 int yylex (int *nastiness);
2228 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2230 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
2232 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
2233 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
2235 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
2236 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
2237 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
2239 ** #line in output files
2240 - --no-line works properly.
2242 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
2243 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
2244 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
2245 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
2247 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
2249 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
2251 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
2254 Fix spurious parse errors.
2257 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
2258 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
2261 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
2262 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
2266 but the converse remains an error:
2270 ** Values of mid-rule actions
2273 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
2275 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
2276 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
2278 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
2283 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
2284 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
2285 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
2286 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2288 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
2289 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
2292 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
2293 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
2294 now creates "bar.c".
2297 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
2298 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
2300 ** Unknown token numbers
2301 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
2305 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
2306 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
2307 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
2308 will be mapped onto another number.
2310 ** Verbose error messages
2311 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
2312 error recovery is possible.
2315 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
2317 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
2318 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
2319 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
2320 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
2321 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
2322 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
2323 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
2324 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
2325 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
2328 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
2331 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
2332 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
2333 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
2334 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
2336 ** Explicit initial rule
2337 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
2338 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
2342 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
2343 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
2345 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
2346 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
2348 ** Rules never reduced
2349 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
2352 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
2353 On a grammar such as
2355 %token useless useful
2357 exp: '0' %prec useful;
2359 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
2360 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
2362 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
2363 as they caused too many portability hassles.
2365 ** Default locations
2366 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
2367 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
2368 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
2369 the computation of @$.
2371 ** Token end-of-file
2372 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
2373 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
2374 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
2378 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
2381 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
2384 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
2385 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
2387 ** Incorrect token definitions
2390 bison used to output
2393 ** Token definitions as enums
2394 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
2395 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
2396 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
2399 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
2400 produces additional information:
2402 complete the core item sets with their closure
2403 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
2404 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
2406 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
2407 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
2408 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
2411 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
2412 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
2420 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
2422 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
2425 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
2426 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
2427 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
2429 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
2430 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
2431 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
2432 kludge will be disabled.
2434 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
2437 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
2439 ** File name clashes are detected
2440 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
2441 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
2443 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
2444 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
2445 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
2446 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
2447 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
2448 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
2450 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
2451 many portability hassles.
2453 ** DJGPP support added.
2455 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
2457 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
2460 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
2461 under some conditions.
2466 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
2468 ** Fix Yacc output file names
2470 ** Portability fixes
2472 ** Italian, Dutch translations
2474 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
2478 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
2479 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
2480 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
2481 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
2482 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
2484 ** Use of alloca in parsers
2485 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
2486 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
2488 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
2491 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
2493 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
2494 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
2497 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
2498 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
2499 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
2501 ** Better C++ compliance
2502 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
2503 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
2506 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
2509 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
2512 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
2515 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
2518 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
2520 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
2522 ** Swedish translation
2525 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
2526 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
2527 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
2529 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
2530 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
2531 previous allocations were not freed.
2533 ** Fixed verbose output file.
2534 Some newlines were missing.
2535 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
2537 ** Fixed conflict report.
2538 Option -v was needed to get the result.
2542 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
2544 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
2546 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
2548 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
2550 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
2551 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
2553 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
2555 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
2559 New, aliasing "--output-file".
2561 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
2563 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
2564 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
2567 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
2570 ** Portability fixes.
2572 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
2574 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
2575 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
2576 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
2577 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
2579 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
2581 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
2583 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2585 ** Russian translation added.
2587 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2589 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2591 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2593 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2595 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2597 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2598 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2601 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2602 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2605 Automatic location tracking.
2607 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2609 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2613 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2615 ** There is now a FAQ.
2617 * Changes in version 1.27:
2619 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2620 some systems has been fixed.
2622 * Changes in version 1.26:
2624 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2626 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2628 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2630 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2632 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2634 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2636 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2637 not provide alloca().
2639 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2641 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2642 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2644 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2645 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2646 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2648 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2649 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2650 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2653 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2654 directives in the parser file.
2656 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2657 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2659 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2660 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2661 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2662 a switch statement body.
2664 * Changes in version 1.23:
2666 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2667 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2668 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2669 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2671 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2673 * Changes in version 1.22:
2675 --help option added.
2677 * Changes in version 1.20:
2679 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2683 Copyright (C) 1995-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2685 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2687 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2688 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2689 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2690 (at your option) any later version.
2692 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2693 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2694 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2695 GNU General Public License for more details.
2697 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2698 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2700 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2701 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2702 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2703 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2704 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2705 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2706 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2707 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2708 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2709 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2710 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2711 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2712 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2713 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2714 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2715 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2716 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2717 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
2718 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts parsers yystackp yyval yynerrs
2719 LocalWords: Théophile Ranquet Santet fno fnone stype associativity Tolmer
2720 LocalWords: Wprecedence Rassoul Wempty Paolo Bonzini parser's Michiel loc
2721 LocalWords: redeclaration sval fcaret reentrant XSLT xsl Wmaybe yyvsp Tedi
2722 LocalWords: pragmas noreturn untyped Rozenman unexpanded Wojciech Polak
2723 LocalWords: Alexandre MERCHANTABILITY yytype