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