+** Incompatible changes
+
+*** Obsolete features
+
+ Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2).
+ Support for yystype and yyltype (instead of YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE)
+ is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875).
+ Support for YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875).
+
+** Warnings
+
+*** Enhancements of the -Werror option
+
+ The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
+ warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
+ using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
+
+ For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
+ warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
+ errors (and only those):
+
+ $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
+
+ If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
+ errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
+
+ $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
+
+ (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
+
+ Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
+ "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
+
+ Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
+ Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
+ incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
+
+*** The display of warnings is now richer
+
+ The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
+
+ foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
+
+ In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
+ "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
+ to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
+
+ For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
+ with failure):
+
+ bison: warnings being treated as errors
+ input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
+
+ it now reports:
+
+ input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
+
+*** Deprecated constructs
+
+ The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
+ support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
+ used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
+
+*** Useless semantic types
+
+ Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
+ semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
+ %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
+ types that trigger the warning:
+
+ %token <type1> term
+ %type <type2> nterm
+ %printer {} <type1> <type3>
+ %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
+ %%
+ nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
+
+ 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
+ 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
+
+*** Undefined but unused symbols
+
+ Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
+ the grammar. This is now only a warning.
+
+ %printer {} symbol1
+ %destructor {} symbol2
+ %type <type> symbol3
+ %%
+ exp: "a";
+
+*** Useless destructors or printers
+
+ Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
+ example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
+ useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
+ symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
+
+ %token <type1> token1
+ <type2> token2
+ <type3> token3
+ <type4> token4
+ %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
+ %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
+
+*** Conflicts
+
+ The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
+ conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
+
+ %glr-parser
+ %%
+ exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
+
+ compare the previous version of bison:
+
+ $ bison foo.y
+ foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
+ $ bison -Werror foo.y
+ bison: warnings being treated as errors
+ foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
+
+ with the new behavior:
+
+ $ bison foo.y
+ foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
+ foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
+ $ bison -Werror foo.y
+ foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
+ foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
+
+ When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
+
+ %expect 0
+ %glr-parser
+ %%
+ exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
+
+ Former behavior:
+
+ $ bison bar.y
+ bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
+ bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
+ bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
+
+ New one:
+
+ $ bison bar.y
+ bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
+ bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
+
+** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
+
+ The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
+ yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
+ or more arguments. Instead of
+
+ %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
+ %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
+ %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
+ %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
+
+ one may now declare
+
+ %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
+
+** Java skeleton improvements
+
+ The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
+ is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
+ and "%define init_throws".
+
+** C++ skeletons improvements
+
+*** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
+
+ Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
+ are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
+ location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
+
+*** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
+
+ Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
+
+*** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
+
+ The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
+ thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
+ This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
+ rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
+ used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
+ factory invoked by the user actions).
+
+** Variable api.token.prefix
+
+ The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
+ the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
+ with identifiers in the target language. For instance
+
+ %token FILE for ERROR
+ %define api.token.prefix "TOK_"
+ %%
+ start: FILE for ERROR;
+
+ will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
+ TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
+ use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
+ uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
+
+** Renamed %define variables
+
+ The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
+ compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
+
+ lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
+ lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
+ namespace -> api.namespace
+
+** Variable parse.error
+
+ This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
+ %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
+ verbose".
+
+** Semantic predicates
+
+ The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
+ form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
+ YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
+ in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
+ the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
+ expressions.
+
+** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
+
+ It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
+ reduce/reduce conflicts.
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
+
+** Changes in the format of error messages
+
+ This used to be the format of many error reports:
+
+ foo.y:5.10-24: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
+ foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
+
+ It is now:
+
+ foo.y:5.10-25: result type clash on merge function 'merge': <t3> != <t2>
+ foo.y:4.13-27: previous declaration
+
+** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
+
+ The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
+ release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
+ before re-throwing the exception.
+
+ This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
+ appreciated.
+
+** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
+
+ The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
+ for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
+ and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
+ then responsible to define her type.
+
+ This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
+ and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
+ them.
+
+ This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
+ under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
+ compatibility).
+
+ For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
+ position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
+ api.position.type.
+
+** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
+
+ The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
+ now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
+ numbered and left-justified.
+
+ The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
+ diamond shaped nodes.
+
+ These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
+ processing, with minor (documented) differences.
+
+ Two nodes were added to the documentation: Xml and Graphviz.
+
+* Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
+
projects / bison.git / blobdiff