-*- outline -*-
+* Short term
+** Use b4_symbol in all the skeleton
+Then remove the older system, including the tables generated by
+output.c
-* URGENT: Prologue
-The %union is declared after the user C declarations. It can be
-a problem if YYSTYPE is declared after the user part.
+** Update the documentation on gnu.org
-Actually, the real problem seems that the %union ought to be output
-where it was defined. For instance, in gettext/intl/plural.y, we
-have:
+** Get rid of fake #lines [Bison: ...]
+Possibly as simple as checking whether the column number is nonnegative.
+
+I have seen messages like the following from GCC.
+
+<built-in>:0: fatal error: opening dependency file .deps/libltdl/argz.Tpo: No such file or directory
+
+
+** Document %define assert
+
+** Discuss about %printer/%destroy in the case of C++.
+It would be very nice to provide the symbol classes with an operator<<
+and a destructor. Unfortunately the syntax we have chosen for
+%destroy and %printer make them hard to reuse. For instance, the user
+is invited to write something like
+
+ %printer { debug_stream() << $$; } <my_type>;
+
+which is hard to reuse elsewhere since it wants to use
+"debug_stream()" to find the stream to use. The same applies to
+%destroy: we told the user she could use the members of the Parser
+class in the printers/destructors, which is not good for an operator<<
+since it is no longer bound to a particular parser, it's just a
+(standalone symbol).
+
+** Rename LR0.cc
+as lr0.cc, why upper case?
+
+** bench several bisons.
+Enhance bench.pl with %b to run different bisons.
+
+** Use b4_symbol everywhere.
+Move its definition in the more standard places and deploy it in other
+skeletons.
+
+* Various
+** YYPRINT
+glr.c inherits its symbol_print function from c.m4, which supports
+YYPRINT. But to use YYPRINT yytoknum is needed, which not defined by
+glr.c.
+
+Anyway, IMHO YYPRINT is obsolete and should be restricted to yacc.c.
+
+** YYERRCODE
+Defined to 256, but not used, not documented. Probably the token
+number for the error token, which POSIX wants to be 256, but which
+Bison might renumber if the user used number 256. Keep fix and doc?
+Throw away?
+
+We could (should?) also treat the case of the undef_token, which is
+numbered 257 for yylex, and 2 internal. Both appear for instance in
+toknum:
+
+ const unsigned short int
+ parser::yytoken_number_[] =
+ {
+ 0, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264,
+
+while here
+
+ enum yytokentype {
+ TOK_EOF = 0,
+ TOK_EQ = 258,
+
+so both 256 and 257 are "mysterious".
+
+ const char*
+ const parser::yytname_[] =
+ {
+ "\"end of command\"", "error", "$undefined", "\"=\"", "\"break\"",
+
+
+** YYFAIL
+It is seems to be *really* obsolete now, shall we remove it?
+
+** YYBACKUP
+There is no test about it, no examples in the doc, and I'm not sure
+what it should look like. For instance what follows crashes.
+
+ %error-verbose
+ %debug
+ %pure-parser
+ %code {
+ # include <stdio.h>
+ # include <stdlib.h>
+ # include <assert.h>
+
+ static void yyerror (const char *msg);
+ static int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
+ }
+ %%
+ exp:
+ 'a' { printf ("a: %d\n", $1); }
+ | 'b' { YYBACKUP('a', 123); }
+ ;
+ %%
+ static int
+ yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval)
+ {
+ static char const input[] = "b";
+ static size_t toknum;
+ assert (toknum < sizeof input);
+ *yylval = (toknum + 1) * 10;
+ return input[toknum++];
+ }
+
+ static void
+ yyerror (const char *msg)
+ {
+ fprintf (stderr, "%s\n", msg);
+ }
+
+ int
+ main (void)
+ {
+ yydebug = !!getenv("YYDEBUG");
+ return yyparse ();
+ }
+
+** yychar == yyempty_
+The code in yyerrlab reads:
+
+ if (yychar <= YYEOF)
+ {
+ /* Return failure if at end of input. */
+ if (yychar == YYEOF)
+ YYABORT;
+ }
- %{
- ...
- #include "gettextP.h"
- ...
- %}
+There are only two yychar that can be <= YYEOF: YYEMPTY and YYEOF.
+But I can't produce the situation where yychar is YYEMPTY here, is it
+really possible? The test suite does not exercise this case.
- %union {
- unsigned long int num;
- enum operator op;
- struct expression *exp;
- }
+This shows that it would be interesting to manage to install skeleton
+coverage analysis to the test suite.
- %{
- ...
- static int yylex PARAMS ((YYSTYPE *lval, const char **pexp));
- ...
- %}
+** Table definitions
+It should be very easy to factor the definition of the various tables,
+including the separation bw declaration and definition. See for
+instance b4_table_define in lalr1.cc. This way, we could even factor
+C vs. C++ definitions.
-Where the first part defines struct expression, the second uses it to
-define YYSTYPE, and the last uses YYSTYPE. Only this order is valid.
+* From lalr1.cc to yacc.c
+** Single stack
+Merging the three stacks in lalr1.cc simplified the code, prompted for
+other improvements and also made it faster (probably because memory
+management is performed once instead of three times). I suggest that
+we do the same in yacc.c.
-Note that we have the same problem with GCC.
+** yysyntax_error
+In lalr1.cc we invoke it with the translated lookahead (yytoken), and
+yacc.c uses yychar. I don't see why.
-I suggest splitting the prologue into pre-prologue and post-prologue.
-The reason is that:
+** yysyntax_error
+The use of switch to select yyfmt in lalr1.cc seems simpler than
+what's done in yacc.c.
-1. we keep language independance as it is the skeleton that joins the
-two prologues (there is no need for the engine to encode union yystype
-and to output it inside the prologue, which breaks the language
-independance of the generator)
+* Header guards
-2. that makes it possible to have several %union in input. I think
-this is a pleasant (but useless currently) feature, but in the future,
-I want a means to %include other bits of grammars, and _then_ it will
-be important for the various bits to define their needs in %union.
+From Franc,ois: should we keep the directory part in the CPP guard?
-* Coding system independence
-Paul notes:
- Currently Bison assumes 8-bit bytes (i.e. that UCHAR_MAX is
- 255). It also assumes that the 8-bit character encoding is
- the same for the invocation of 'bison' as it is for the
- invocation of 'cc', but this is not necessarily true when
- people run bison on an ASCII host and then use cc on an EBCDIC
- host. I don't think these topics are worth our time
- addressing (unless we find a gung-ho volunteer for EBCDIC or
- PDP-10 ports :-) but they should probably be documented
- somewhere.
+* Yacc.c: CPP Macros
+
+Do some people use YYPURE, YYLSP_NEEDED like we do in the test suite?
+They should not: it is not documented. But if they need to, let's
+find something clean (not like YYLSP_NEEDED...).
+
+
+* Installation
+
+* Documentation
+Before releasing, make sure the documentation ("Understanding your
+parser") refers to the current `output' format.
+
+* Report
+
+** GLR
+How would Paul like to display the conflicted actions? In particular,
+what when two reductions are possible on a given lookahead token, but one is
+part of $default. Should we make the two reductions explicit, or just
+keep $default? See the following point.
+
+** Disabled Reductions
+See `tests/conflicts.at (Defaulted Conflicted Reduction)', and decide
+what we want to do.
+
+** Documentation
+Extend with error productions. The hard part will probably be finding
+the right rule so that a single state does not exhibit too many yet
+undocumented ``features''. Maybe an empty action ought to be
+presented too. Shall we try to make a single grammar with all these
+features, or should we have several very small grammars?
+
+** --report=conflict-path
+Provide better assistance for understanding the conflicts by providing
+a sample text exhibiting the (LALR) ambiguity. See the paper from
+DeRemer and Penello: they already provide the algorithm.
+
+** Statically check for potential ambiguities in GLR grammars. See
+<http://www.i3s.unice.fr/~schmitz/papers.html#expamb> for an approach.
+
+
+* Extensions
+
+** Labeling the symbols
+Have a look at the Lemon parser generator: instead of $1, $2 etc. they
+can name the values. This is much more pleasant. For instance:
+
+ exp (res): exp (a) '+' exp (b) { $res = $a + $b; };
+
+I love this. I have been bitten too often by the removal of the
+symbol, and forgetting to shift all the $n to $n-1. If you are
+unlucky, it compiles...
+
+But instead of using $a etc., we can use regular variables. And
+instead of using (), I propose to use `:' (again). Paul suggests
+supporting `->' in addition to `:' to separate LHS and RHS. In other
+words:
+
+ r:exp -> a:exp '+' b:exp { r = a + b; };
+
+That requires an significant improvement of the grammar parser. Using
+GLR would be nice. It also requires that Bison know the type of the
+symbols (which will be useful for %include anyway). So we have some
+time before...
+
+Note that there remains the problem of locations: `@r'?
+
+
+** $-1
+We should find a means to provide an access to values deep in the
+stack. For instance, instead of
+
+ baz: qux { $$ = $<foo>-1 + $<bar>0 + $1; }
+
+we should be able to have:
+
+ foo($foo) bar($bar) baz($bar): qux($qux) { $baz = $foo + $bar + $qux; }
-* Using enums instead of int for tokens.
-Paul suggests:
-
- #ifndef YYTOKENTYPE
- # if defined (__STDC__) || defined (__cplusplus)
- /* Put the tokens into the symbol table, so that GDB and other debuggers
- know about them. */
- enum yytokentype {
- FOO = 256,
- BAR,
- ...
- };
- /* POSIX requires `int' for tokens in interfaces. */
- # define YYTOKENTYPE int
- # endif
- #endif
- #define FOO 256
- #define BAR 257
- ...
-
-> I'm in favor of
->
-> %token FOO 256
-> %token BAR 257
->
-> and Bison moves error into 258.
-
-Yes, I think that's a valid extension too, if the user doesn't define
-the token number for error.
-
-* Output directory
-Akim:
-
-| I consider this to be a bug in bison:
-|
-| /tmp % mkdir src
-| /tmp % cp ~/src/bison/tests/calc.y src
-| /tmp % mkdir build && cd build
-| /tmp/build % bison ../src/calc.y
-| /tmp/build % cd ..
-| /tmp % ls -l build src
-| build:
-| total 0
-|
-| src:
-| total 32
-| -rw-r--r-- 1 akim lrde 27553 oct 2 16:31 calc.tab.c
-| -rw-r--r-- 1 akim lrde 3335 oct 2 16:31 calc.y
-|
-|
-| Would it be safe to change this behavior to something more reasonable?
-| Do you think some people depend upon this?
-
-Jim:
-
-Is it that behavior documented?
-If so, then it's probably not reasonable to change it.
-I've Cc'd the automake list, because some of automake's
-rules use bison through $(YACC) -- though I'll bet they
-all use it in yacc-compatible mode.
-
-Pavel:
-
-Hello, Jim and others!
-
-> Is it that behavior documented?
-> If so, then it's probably not reasonable to change it.
-> I've Cc'd the automake list, because some of automake's
-> rules use bison through $(YACC) -- though I'll bet they
-> all use it in yacc-compatible mode.
-
-Yes, Automake currently used bison in Automake-compatible mode, but it
-would be fair for Automake to switch to the native mode as long as the
-processed files are distributed and "missing" emulates bison.
-
-In any case, the makefiles should specify the output file explicitly
-instead of relying on weird defaults.
-
-> | src:
-> | total 32
-> | -rw-r--r-- 1 akim lrde 27553 oct 2 16:31 calc.tab.c
-> | -rw-r--r-- 1 akim lrde 3335 oct 2 16:31 calc.y
-
-This is not _that_ ugly as it seems - with Automake you want to put
-sources where they belong - to the source directory.
-
-> | This is not _that_ ugly as it seems - with Automake you want to put
-> | sources where they belong - to the source directory.
->
-> The difference source/build you are referring to is based on Automake
-> concepts. They have no sense at all for tools such as bison or gcc
-> etc. They have input and output. I do not want them to try to grasp
-> source/build. I want them to behave uniformly: output *here*.
-
-I realize that.
-
-It's unfortunate that the native mode of Bison behaves in a less uniform
-way than the yacc mode. I agree with your point. Bison maintainters may
-want to fix it along with the documentation.
+Or something like this.
+** %if and the like
+It should be possible to have %if/%else/%endif. The implementation is
+not clear: should it be lexical or syntactic. Vadim Maslow thinks it
+must be in the scanner: we must not parse what is in a switched off
+part of %if. Akim Demaille thinks it should be in the parser, so as
+to avoid falling into another CPP mistake.
+
+** XML Output
+There are couple of available extensions of Bison targeting some XML
+output. Some day we should consider including them. One issue is
+that they seem to be quite orthogonal to the parsing technique, and
+seem to depend mostly on the possibility to have some code triggered
+for each reduction. As a matter of fact, such hooks could also be
+used to generate the yydebug traces. Some generic scheme probably
+exists in there.
+
+XML output for GNU Bison and gcc
+ http://www.cs.may.ie/~jpower/Research/bisonXML/
+
+XML output for GNU Bison
+ http://yaxx.sourceforge.net/
* Unit rules
Maybe we could expand unit rules, i.e., transform
exp: exp '+' exp | exp '&' exp;
when there are no actions. This can significantly speed up some
-grammars.
-
-* Stupid error messages
-An example shows it easily:
-
-src/bison/tests % ./testsuite -k calc,location,error-verbose -l
-GNU Bison 1.49a test suite test groups:
-
- NUM: FILENAME:LINE TEST-GROUP-NAME
- KEYWORDS
-
- 51: calc.at:440 Calculator --locations --yyerror-verbose
- 52: calc.at:442 Calculator --defines --locations --name-prefix=calc --verbose --yacc --yyerror-verbose
- 54: calc.at:445 Calculator --debug --defines --locations --name-prefix=calc --verbose --yacc --yyerror-verbose
-src/bison/tests % ./testsuite 51 -d
-## --------------------------- ##
-## GNU Bison 1.49a test suite. ##
-## --------------------------- ##
- 51: calc.at:440 ok
-## ---------------------------- ##
-## All 1 tests were successful. ##
-## ---------------------------- ##
-src/bison/tests % cd ./testsuite.dir/51
-tests/testsuite.dir/51 % echo "()" | ./calc
-1.2-1.3: parse error, unexpected ')', expecting error or "number" or '-' or '('
-
-* yyerror, yyprint interface
-It should be improved, in particular when using Bison features such as
-locations, and YYPARSE_PARAMS. For the time being, it is recommended
-to #define yyerror and yyprint to steal internal variables...
-
-* read_pipe.c
-This is not portable to DOS for instance. Implement a more portable
-scheme. Sources of inspiration include GNU diff, and Free Recode.
-
-* Memory leaks in the generator
-A round of memory leak clean ups would be most welcome. Dmalloc,
-Checker GCC, Electric Fence, or Valgrind: you chose your tool.
-
-* Memory leaks in the parser
-The same applies to the generated parsers. In particular, this is
-critical for user data: when aborting a parsing, when handling the
-error token etc., we often throw away yylval without giving a chance
-of cleaning it up to the user.
+grammars. I can't find the papers. In particular the book `LR
+parsing: Theory and Practice' is impossible to find, but according to
+`Parsing Techniques: a Practical Guide', it includes information about
+this issue. Does anybody have it?
+
+
+
+* Documentation
+
+** History/Bibliography
+Some history of Bison and some bibliography would be most welcome.
+Are there any Texinfo standards for bibliography?
+
+
+
+* Java, Fortran, etc.
+
+
+* Coding system independence
+Paul notes:
+
+ Currently Bison assumes 8-bit bytes (i.e. that UCHAR_MAX is
+ 255). It also assumes that the 8-bit character encoding is
+ the same for the invocation of 'bison' as it is for the
+ invocation of 'cc', but this is not necessarily true when
+ people run bison on an ASCII host and then use cc on an EBCDIC
+ host. I don't think these topics are worth our time
+ addressing (unless we find a gung-ho volunteer for EBCDIC or
+ PDP-10 ports :-) but they should probably be documented
+ somewhere.
+
+ More importantly, Bison does not currently allow NUL bytes in
+ tokens, either via escapes (e.g., "x\0y") or via a NUL byte in
+ the source code. This should get fixed.
* --graph
-Show reductions. []
+Show reductions.
* Broken options ?
-** %no-lines [ok]
-** %no-parser []
-** %pure-parser []
-** %semantic-parser []
-** %token-table []
-** Options which could use parse_dquoted_param ().
-Maybe transfered in lex.c.
-*** %skeleton [ok]
-*** %output []
-*** %file-prefix []
-*** %name-prefix []
-
-** Skeleton strategy. []
-Must we keep %no-parser?
- %token-table?
-*** New skeletons. []
-
-* src/print_graph.c
-Find the best graph parameters. []
-
-* doc/bison.texinfo
-** Update
-informations about ERROR_VERBOSE. []
-** Add explainations about
-skeleton muscles. []
-%skeleton. []
-
-* testsuite
-** tests/pure-parser.at []
-New tests.
-
-* Debugging parsers
-
-From Greg McGary:
-
-akim demaille <akim.demaille@epita.fr> writes:
-
-> With great pleasure! Nonetheless, things which are debatable
-> (or not, but just `big') should be discuss in `public': something
-> like help- or bug-bison@gnu.org is just fine. Jesse and I are there,
-> but there is also Jim and some other people.
-
-I have no idea whether it qualifies as big or controversial, so I'll
-just summarize for you. I proposed this change years ago and was
-surprised that it was met with utter indifference!
-
-This debug feature is for the programs/grammars one develops with
-bison, not for debugging bison itself. I find that the YYDEBUG
-output comes in a very inconvenient format for my purposes.
-When debugging gcc, for instance, what I want is to see a trace of
-the sequence of reductions and the line#s for the semantic actions
-so I can follow what's happening. Single-step in gdb doesn't cut it
-because to move from one semantic action to the next takes you through
-lots of internal machinery of the parser, which is uninteresting.
-
-The change I made was to the format of the debug output, so that it
-comes out in the format of C error messages, digestible by emacs
-compile mode, like so:
-
-grammar.y:1234: foo: bar(0x123456) baz(0x345678)
-
-where "foo: bar baz" is the reduction rule, whose semantic action
-appears on line 1234 of the bison grammar file grammar.y. The hex
-numbers on the rhs tokens are the parse-stack values associated with
-those tokens. Of course, yytype might be something totally
-incompatible with that representation, but for the most part, yytype
-values are single words (scalars or pointers). In the case of gcc,
-they're most often pointers to tree nodes. Come to think of it, the
-right thing to do is to make the printing of stack values be
-user-definable. It would also be useful to include the filename &
-line# of the file being parsed, but the main filename & line# should
-continue to be that of grammar.y
-
-Anyway, this feature has saved my life on numerous occasions. The way
-I customarily use it is to first run bison with the traces on, isolate
-the sequence of reductions that interests me, put those traces in a
-buffer and force it into compile-mode, then visit each of those lines
-in the grammar and set breakpoints with C-x SPACE. Then, I can run
-again under the control of gdb and stop at each semantic action.
-With the hex addresses of tree nodes, I can inspect the values
-associated with any rhs token.
-
-You like?
-
-* input synclines
-Some users create their foo.y files, and equip them with #line. Bison
-should recognize these, and preserve them.
+** %token-table
+** Skeleton strategy
+Must we keep %token-table?
* BTYacc
-See if we can integrate backtracking in Bison. Contact the BTYacc
-maintainers.
+See if we can integrate backtracking in Bison. Charles-Henri de
+Boysson <de-boy_c@epita.fr> has been working on this, but never gave
+the results.
-* Automaton report
-Display more clearly the lookaheads for each item.
+Vadim Maslow, the maintainer of BTYacc was once contacted. Adjusting
+the Bison grammar parser will be needed to support some extra BTYacc
+features. This is less urgent.
+
+** Keeping the conflicted actions
+First, analyze the differences between byacc and btyacc (I'm referring
+to the executables). Find where the conflicts are preserved.
+
+** Compare with the GLR tables
+See how isomorphic the way BTYacc and the way the GLR adjustments in
+Bison are compatible. *As much as possible* one should try to use the
+same implementation in the Bison executables. I insist: it should be
+very feasible to use the very same conflict tables.
+
+** Adjust the skeletons
+Import the skeletons for C and C++.
-* RR conflicts
-See if we can use precedence between rules to solve RR conflicts. See
-what POSIX says.
* Precedence
+
+** Partial order
It is unfortunate that there is a total order for precedence. It
makes it impossible to have modular precedence information. We should
-move to partial orders.
-
-* Parsing grammars
-Rewrite the reader in Bison.
-
-* Problems with aliases
-From: "Baum, Nathan I" <s0009525@chelt.ac.uk>
-Subject: Token Alias Bug
-To: "'bug-bison@gnu.org'" <bug-bison@gnu.org>
-
-I've noticed a bug in bison. Sadly, our eternally wise sysadmins won't let
-us use CVS, so I can't find out if it's been fixed already...
-
-Basically, I made a program (in flex) that went through a .y file looking
-for "..."-tokens, and then outputed a %token
-line for it. For single-character ""-tokens, I reasoned, I could just use
-[%token 'A' "A"]. However, this causes Bison to output a [#define 'A' 65],
-which cppp chokes on, not unreasonably. (And even if cppp didn't choke, I
-obviously wouldn't want (char)'A' to be replaced with (int)65 throughout my
-code.
-
-Bison normally forgoes outputing a #define for a character token. However,
-it always outputs an aliased token -- even if the token is an alias for a
-character token. We don't want that. The problem is in /output.c/, as I
-recall. When it outputs the token definitions, it checks for a character
-token, and then checks for an alias token. If the character token check is
-placed after the alias check, then it works correctly.
-
-Alias tokens seem to be something of a kludge. What about an [%alias "..."]
-command...
-
- %alias T_IF "IF"
-
-Hmm. I can't help thinking... What about a --generate-lex option that
-creates an .l file for the alias tokens used... (Or an option to make a
-gperf file, etc...)
-
-* Presentation of the report file
-From: "Baum, Nathan I" <s0009525@chelt.ac.uk>
-Subject: Token Alias Bug
-To: "'bug-bison@gnu.org'" <bug-bison@gnu.org>
-
-I've also noticed something, that whilst not *wrong*, is inconvienient: I
-use the verbose mode to help find the causes of unresolved shift/reduce
-conflicts. However, this mode insists on starting the .output file with a
-list of *resolved* conflicts, something I find quite useless. Might it be
-possible to define a -v mode, and a -vv mode -- Where the -vv mode shows
-everything, but the -v mode only tells you what you need for examining
-conflicts? (Or, perhaps, a "*** This state has N conflicts ***" marker above
-each state with conflicts.)
+move to partial orders (sounds like series/parallel orders to me).
+
+** RR conflicts
+See if we can use precedence between rules to solve RR conflicts. See
+what POSIX says.
* $undefined
Suggest: Change the name $undefined to undefined; looks better in outputs.
+
* Default Action
From Hans:
- For use with my C++ parser, I transported the "switch (yyn)" statement
I was wondering what you think about adding YYACT_PROLOGUE/EPILOGUE
to bison. If you're interested, I'll work on a patch.
+* Better graphics
+Equip the parser with a means to create the (visual) parse tree.
+
-----
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-Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
+along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
projects / bison.git / blobdiff