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