3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
5 ** Incompatible changes
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).
16 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
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.
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):
26 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
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:
31 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
33 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
35 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
36 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
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".
42 *** The display of warnings is now richer
44 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
46 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
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].
52 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
55 bison: warnings being treated as errors
56 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
60 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
62 *** Deprecated constructs
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.
68 *** Useless semantic types
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:
77 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
78 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
80 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
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
85 *** Undefined but unused symbols
87 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
88 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
91 %destructor {} symbol2
96 *** Useless destructors or printers
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.
103 %token <type1> token1
107 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
108 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
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:
117 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
119 compare the previous version of bison:
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
127 with the new behavior:
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]
136 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
141 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
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
153 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
154 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
156 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
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
162 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
163 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
164 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
165 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
169 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
171 ** Java skeleton improvements
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".
177 ** C++ skeletons improvements
179 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
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).
185 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
187 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
189 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
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).
198 ** Variable api.tokens.prefix
200 The variable api.tokens.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
204 %token FILE for ERROR
205 %define api.tokens.prefix "TOK_"
207 start: FILE for ERROR;
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).
214 ** Variable api.namespace
216 The 'namespace' variable is renamed 'api.namespace'. Backward
217 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
219 ** Variable parse.error
221 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
222 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
225 ** Semantic predicates
227 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
228 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
229 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
230 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
231 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
234 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
236 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
237 reduce/reduce conflicts.
239 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
243 Bugs in the test suite have been fixed.
245 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
246 users to the appropriate place to report them.
248 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
250 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
251 generated, are removed.
253 ** Changes in the format of error messages
255 This used to be the format of many error reports:
257 foo.y:5.10-24: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
258 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
262 foo.y:5.10-25: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
263 foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
265 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
267 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
268 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
269 For instance the header generated from
271 %define api.prefix "calc"
272 %defines "lib/parse.h"
274 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
276 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
280 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
281 suite have been fixed.
283 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
285 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
286 invalid C++. This is fixed.
288 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
290 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
292 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
294 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
298 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
299 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
300 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
302 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
306 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
310 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
312 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
314 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
316 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
317 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
320 ** Type names in actions
322 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
323 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
325 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
327 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
328 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
330 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
334 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
335 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
339 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
340 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
343 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
345 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
348 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
349 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
351 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
354 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
356 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
357 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
358 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
359 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
362 ** Generated Parser Headers
364 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
366 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
367 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
372 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
374 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
376 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
377 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
379 int bar_parse (void);
383 #define yyparse bar_parse
386 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
387 single compilation unit.
389 *** Exported symbols in C++
391 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
392 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
393 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
397 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
400 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
402 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
403 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
404 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
405 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
406 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
407 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
408 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
410 The following examples compares both:
412 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
413 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
414 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
420 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
421 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
423 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
424 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
425 > # if defined YYDEBUG
427 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
429 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
432 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
436 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
437 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
440 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
441 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
442 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
443 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
448 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
449 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
450 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
453 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
454 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
457 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
459 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
461 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
463 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
467 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
469 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
471 ** glr.c improvements:
473 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
475 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
476 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
478 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
480 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
481 when -std is passed to GCC).
483 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
485 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
486 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
490 *** C++11 compatibility:
492 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
497 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
498 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
500 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
501 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
503 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
505 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
506 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
507 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
509 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
511 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
512 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
514 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
518 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
519 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
520 documentation were fixed.
522 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
524 ** Changes in the manual:
526 *** %printer is documented
528 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
529 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
531 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
532 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
534 *** Several improvements have been made:
536 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
537 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
538 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
539 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
543 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
545 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
546 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
548 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
550 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
552 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
553 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
555 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
557 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
558 halts in the middle of its course.
560 * Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
562 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
564 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
565 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
566 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
567 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
568 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
572 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
573 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
576 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
577 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
580 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
581 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
583 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
585 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
586 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
588 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
589 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
590 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
592 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
593 will help to stabilize them.
595 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
597 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
598 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
599 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
600 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
601 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
602 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
603 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
604 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
605 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
607 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
608 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
609 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
610 file with these directives:
614 %define lr.type canonical-lr
616 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
617 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
618 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
621 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
624 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
626 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
627 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
628 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
629 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
630 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
631 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
632 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
633 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
634 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
635 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
638 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
639 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
640 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
641 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
644 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
645 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
646 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
647 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
648 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
649 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
650 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
651 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
654 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
655 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
657 %define parse.lac full
659 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
660 details including a few caveats.
662 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
665 ** %define improvements:
667 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
669 Each of these command-line options
672 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
675 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
677 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
679 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
681 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
682 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
683 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
684 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
686 *** Variables renamed:
688 The following %define variables
691 lr.keep_unreachable_states
696 lr.keep-unreachable-states
698 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
699 for backward compatibility.
701 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
703 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
704 within quotations marks. For example,
706 %define api.push-pull "push"
710 %define api.push-pull push
712 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
714 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
716 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
718 ** Character literals not of length one:
720 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
721 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
722 the following grammar to be the same token:
728 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
729 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
731 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
733 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
734 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
735 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
736 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
738 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
740 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
741 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
742 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
743 and "last" members, instead of
745 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
749 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
750 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
754 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
760 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
764 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
765 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
769 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
773 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
775 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
776 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
777 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
778 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
780 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
782 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
783 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
784 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
785 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
786 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
787 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
788 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
789 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
791 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
793 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
794 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
795 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
796 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
798 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
802 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
804 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
805 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
806 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
807 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
808 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
809 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
810 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
812 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
814 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
815 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
816 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
817 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
818 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
820 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
821 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
822 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
823 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
824 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
825 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
826 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
827 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
828 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
829 shifted or discarded.
831 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
832 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
833 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
834 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
836 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
837 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
838 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
839 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
840 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
841 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
842 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
843 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
844 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
845 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
846 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
847 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
850 ** Java skeleton fixes:
852 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
854 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
855 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
857 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
859 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
861 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
863 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
864 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
866 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
868 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
870 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
871 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
872 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
873 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
876 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
877 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
878 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
879 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
881 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
882 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
883 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
884 then have no effect on the conflict report.
886 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
888 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
889 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
891 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
893 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
895 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
896 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
897 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
898 suppress all warnings:
902 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
904 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
905 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
906 produced an assertion failure. For example:
910 This bug has been fixed.
912 * Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
914 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
915 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
917 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
920 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
922 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
925 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
926 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
927 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
928 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
930 ** Minor documentation fixes.
932 * Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
934 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
935 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
936 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
937 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
940 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
942 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
943 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
944 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
945 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
946 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
947 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
948 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
949 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
950 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
952 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
954 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
955 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
958 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
960 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
964 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
965 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
968 %code requires {CODE}
969 %code provides {CODE}
972 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
973 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
974 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
975 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
976 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
978 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
979 is still considered experimental.
981 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
983 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
984 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
985 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
986 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
987 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
990 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
991 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
992 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
993 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
994 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
995 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
996 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
998 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
1000 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
1001 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
1002 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
1003 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
1004 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
1005 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
1006 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
1007 be removed altogether.
1009 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
1010 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
1011 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
1012 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
1013 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
1014 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
1015 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
1016 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
1017 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
1018 2.4.2 is not necessary.
1020 ** Internationalization.
1022 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
1023 message translations were not installed although supported by the
1026 * Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
1028 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
1029 declarations have been fixed.
1031 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
1033 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
1034 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
1036 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
1040 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
1042 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
1043 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
1044 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
1045 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
1046 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
1049 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
1051 * Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
1053 ** %language is an experimental feature.
1055 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
1056 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
1057 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
1058 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
1061 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
1063 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
1066 * Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
1068 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
1071 %define NAME "VALUE"
1073 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
1077 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
1078 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
1082 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
1083 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
1084 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
1085 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
1086 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
1088 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
1089 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
1091 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
1093 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1094 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1096 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
1097 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
1098 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
1102 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
1103 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
1104 %skeleton to select it.
1106 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
1108 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
1109 feedback will help to stabilize it.
1113 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
1114 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
1115 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
1116 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
1118 ** XML Automaton Report
1120 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
1121 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
1122 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
1124 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
1125 %defines. For example:
1129 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
1130 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
1131 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
1132 instead of "unused".
1134 ** Unreachable State Removal
1136 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
1137 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
1138 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
1140 1. Removes unreachable states.
1142 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
1143 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
1144 directives in existing grammar files.
1146 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
1147 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
1149 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
1151 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
1153 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
1154 for further discussion.
1156 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
1158 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
1159 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
1160 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
1161 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
1162 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
1163 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
1164 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
1167 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
1170 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
1173 %file-prefix "parser"
1177 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
1179 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
1180 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
1181 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
1182 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
1185 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
1186 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
1187 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
1188 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
1190 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
1191 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
1192 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
1193 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
1195 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
1196 determine whether they should become permanent features.
1198 ** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
1200 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
1201 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
1204 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
1206 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
1207 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
1209 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
1211 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
1212 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
1213 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
1215 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
1216 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
1218 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
1220 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
1223 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1224 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
1225 declared semantic type tags.
1227 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
1228 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
1231 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
1232 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
1233 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
1234 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
1236 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
1237 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
1240 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
1243 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
1244 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
1245 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
1247 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
1248 completely removed from Bison.
1250 * Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
1252 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
1253 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
1254 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
1255 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
1256 and is required by POSIX.
1258 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
1259 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
1261 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
1265 %union { char *string; }
1266 %token <string> STRING1
1267 %token <string> STRING2
1268 %type <string> string1
1269 %type <string> string2
1270 %union { char character; }
1271 %token <character> CHR
1272 %type <character> chr
1273 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
1274 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
1275 %destructor { } <character>
1277 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
1278 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
1279 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
1280 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
1281 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
1283 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
1284 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
1287 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
1288 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
1289 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
1290 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
1291 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
1293 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
1294 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
1296 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
1297 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
1298 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
1299 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
1300 declared after the first %union.
1302 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
1303 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
1304 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
1305 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
1306 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
1307 after the token definitions.
1309 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
1310 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
1312 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
1313 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
1316 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
1317 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
1318 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
1322 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
1323 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1324 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
1325 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
1326 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
1329 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1330 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
1331 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
1332 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
1335 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
1336 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
1337 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
1340 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
1341 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
1342 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
1343 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
1347 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
1348 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
1349 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
1350 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
1351 * Bison-generated definitions. */
1354 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
1355 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
1357 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
1358 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
1360 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
1361 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
1362 in a future release.
1364 * Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
1366 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
1367 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
1369 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
1370 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
1372 * Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
1374 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
1375 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
1376 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
1378 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
1380 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
1382 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
1383 their contents together.
1385 ** New warning: unused values
1386 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
1387 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
1389 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
1393 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
1394 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
1395 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
1397 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
1398 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
1400 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
1403 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
1404 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
1405 values are used, e.g.:
1407 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
1408 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
1411 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
1412 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
1414 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
1416 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
1417 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
1419 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
1420 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
1421 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
1422 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
1424 ** %expect, %expect-rr
1425 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
1426 instead of warnings.
1428 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
1429 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
1430 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
1432 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
1434 ** %require "VERSION"
1435 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
1436 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
1438 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
1439 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
1440 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
1441 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
1442 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
1444 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
1445 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
1446 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
1447 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
1449 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
1450 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
1452 ** DJGPP support added.
1454 * Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
1456 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
1458 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
1459 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
1460 language is still English. For details, please see the new
1461 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
1462 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
1463 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
1465 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
1466 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
1467 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
1468 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
1470 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
1471 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
1472 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
1474 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
1475 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
1476 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
1477 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
1478 unexpected "number"'.
1480 * Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
1482 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
1484 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
1485 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
1486 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
1487 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
1488 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
1490 - Error token location.
1491 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
1492 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
1493 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
1494 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
1496 - Semicolon changes:
1497 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
1498 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
1500 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
1501 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
1502 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
1503 forget a closing quote.
1505 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
1509 - GLR grammars now support locations.
1511 - New directive: %initial-action.
1512 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
1513 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
1515 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
1516 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
1518 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
1519 This is a GNU extension.
1521 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
1522 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
1524 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
1526 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
1527 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
1531 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
1532 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
1533 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
1534 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
1535 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
1536 these violations will become errors again.
1538 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
1539 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
1541 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
1543 * Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
1545 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
1546 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
1548 ** syntax error processing
1550 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
1551 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1554 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1555 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1558 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1560 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1561 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1563 ** POSIX conformance
1565 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1566 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1567 compatibility with Yacc.
1569 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
1570 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
1571 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
1572 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1575 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1576 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1578 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1579 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1581 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1582 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1584 - Yacc command and library now available
1585 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
1586 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1587 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1588 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1590 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1592 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1593 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1594 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1596 ** Other compatibility issues
1598 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
1599 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
1600 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1601 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1602 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
1603 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1605 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
1606 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1608 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1609 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
1611 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1612 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1613 withdrawn in a future release.
1618 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1621 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
1622 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
1624 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
1625 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
1626 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
1629 - a single argument only can be added,
1630 - their types are weak (void *),
1631 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
1632 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
1634 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
1637 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
1638 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
1639 %parse-param {int *randomness}
1641 results in the following signatures:
1643 int yylex (int *nastiness);
1644 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1646 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
1648 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
1649 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
1651 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1652 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
1653 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1655 ** #line in output files
1656 - --no-line works properly.
1658 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1659 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1660 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1661 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1663 * Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1665 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1667 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1670 Fix spurious parse errors.
1673 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1674 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1677 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1678 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1682 but the converse remains an error:
1686 ** Values of mid-rule actions
1689 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1691 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1692 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1694 * Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1699 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1700 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1701 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1702 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1704 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1705 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1708 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1709 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
1710 now creates "bar.c".
1713 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1714 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1716 ** Unknown token numbers
1717 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1721 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1722 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1723 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1724 will be mapped onto another number.
1726 ** Verbose error messages
1727 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
1728 error recovery is possible.
1731 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
1733 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1734 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1735 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1736 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1737 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1738 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1739 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1740 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1741 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1744 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1747 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1748 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1749 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1750 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1752 ** Explicit initial rule
1753 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1754 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1758 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1759 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1761 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1762 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1764 ** Rules never reduced
1765 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1768 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
1769 On a grammar such as
1771 %token useless useful
1773 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1775 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1776 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
1778 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1779 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1781 ** Default locations
1782 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1783 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1784 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1785 the computation of @$.
1787 ** Token end-of-file
1788 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1789 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1790 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
1794 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1797 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1800 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1801 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1803 ** Incorrect token definitions
1806 bison used to output
1809 ** Token definitions as enums
1810 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1811 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1812 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1815 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1816 produces additional information:
1818 complete the core item sets with their closure
1819 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1820 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1822 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1823 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1824 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1827 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1828 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1836 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1838 * Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1841 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1842 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1843 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1845 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1846 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1847 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1848 kludge will be disabled.
1850 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1853 * Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1855 ** File name clashes are detected
1856 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1857 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
1859 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1860 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1861 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1862 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1863 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1864 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1866 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1867 many portability hassles.
1869 ** DJGPP support added.
1871 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
1873 * Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1876 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1877 under some conditions.
1882 * Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1884 ** Fix Yacc output file names
1886 ** Portability fixes
1888 ** Italian, Dutch translations
1890 * Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1894 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
1895 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1896 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1897 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1898 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
1900 ** Use of alloca in parsers
1901 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1902 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1904 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1907 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1909 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1910 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1913 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1914 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1915 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1917 ** Better C++ compliance
1918 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1919 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1922 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1925 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1928 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1931 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1934 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1936 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1938 ** Swedish translation
1941 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1942 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1943 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1945 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1946 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1947 previous allocations were not freed.
1949 ** Fixed verbose output file.
1950 Some newlines were missing.
1951 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1953 ** Fixed conflict report.
1954 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1958 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1960 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1962 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1964 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1966 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1967 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1969 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1971 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1975 New, aliasing "--output-file".
1977 * Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1979 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
1980 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
1983 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
1986 ** Portability fixes.
1988 * Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1990 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1991 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1992 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1993 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1995 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
1997 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1999 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
2001 ** Russian translation added.
2003 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
2005 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
2007 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
2009 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
2011 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
2013 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
2014 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
2017 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
2018 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
2021 Automatic location tracking.
2023 * Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
2025 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
2029 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
2031 ** There is now a FAQ.
2033 * Changes in version 1.27:
2035 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
2036 some systems has been fixed.
2038 * Changes in version 1.26:
2040 ** Bison now uses Automake.
2042 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
2044 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
2046 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
2048 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
2050 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
2052 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
2053 not provide alloca().
2055 * Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
2057 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
2058 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
2060 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
2061 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
2062 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
2064 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
2065 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
2066 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
2069 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
2070 directives in the parser file.
2072 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
2073 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
2075 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
2076 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
2077 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
2078 a switch statement body.
2080 * Changes in version 1.23:
2082 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
2083 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
2084 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
2085 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
2087 Line numbers in output file corrected.
2089 * Changes in version 1.22:
2091 --help option added.
2093 * Changes in version 1.20:
2095 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
2099 Copyright (C) 1995-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2101 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
2103 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
2104 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
2105 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
2106 (at your option) any later version.
2108 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
2109 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
2110 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
2111 GNU General Public License for more details.
2113 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
2114 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
2116 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
2117 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
2118 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
2119 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
2120 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
2121 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
2122 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
2123 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
2124 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
2125 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
2126 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
2127 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
2128 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
2129 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
2130 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
2131 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
2132 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
2133 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init