Bison News
----------
-Changes in version 1.875d:
+Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
-* Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
- string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
- dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
- forget a closing quote.
+* Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
+ "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
+ language is still English. For details, please see the new
+ Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
+ distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
+ Bruno Haible for this new feature.
-* NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
+* Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
+ simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
+ has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
+ always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
-* %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., `%token FOO 0x12d'.
- This is a GNU extension.
+* Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
+ behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
+ successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
-* A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
- reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
+* When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
+ quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
+ a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
+ print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
+ unexpected "number"'.
-* Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
+Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
-Changes in version 1.875c, 2003-08-25:
+* Possibly-incompatible changes
- (Just bug fixes.)
+ - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
+ (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
+ problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
+ YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
+ the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
-Changes in version 1.875b, 2003-06-17:
+ - Error token location.
+ During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
+ to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
+ the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
+ recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
-* GLR grammars now support locations.
+ - Semicolon changes:
+ . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
+ . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
-* Semicolon changes:
- - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
- - Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
- - Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
+ - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
+ string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
+ dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
+ forget a closing quote.
+
+ - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
+
+* New features
+
+ - GLR grammars now support locations.
+
+ - New directive: %initial-action.
+ This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
+ initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
+
+ - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
+ reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
+
+ - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., `%token FOO 0x12d'.
+ This is a GNU extension.
-Changes in version 1.875a, 2003-02-01:
+ - The option `--report=lookahead' was changed to `--report=look-ahead'.
+ The old spelling still works, but is not documented and will be
+ removed.
-* For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
- This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
- reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
- are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
- versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
- these violations will become errors again.
+ - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
-* New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
- yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
+ - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
+ yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
+
+* Bug fixes
+
+ - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
+ This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
+ reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
+ are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
+ versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
+ these violations will become errors again.
+
+ - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
+ arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
+
+ - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
\f
Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
- <http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-bison/2002-May/001452.html>.
+ Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
+ <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
* Traces
Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
produces additional information:
- itemset
complete the core item sets with their closure
- - lookahead
- explicitly associate lookaheads to items
+ - lookahead [changed to `look-ahead' in 1.875e and later]
+ explicitly associate look-ahead tokens to items
- solved
describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
problems as on AIX.
+* yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
+
* When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
(as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
-----
-Copyright (C) 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004
+Copyright (C) 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005
Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This file is part of Bison, the GNU Compiler Compiler.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with autoconf; see the file COPYING. If not, write to
-the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
-Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
+the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
+Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.