+* Various
+** 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?
+
+** 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 ();
+ }
+
+
+* Header guards
+
+From Franc,ois: should we keep the directory part in the CPP guard?
+
+
+* 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.
+
+* lalr1.cc
+** I18n
+Catch up with yacc.c.
+
+* 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; }
+
+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: arith | bool;
+ arith: exp '+' exp;
+ bool: exp '&' exp;
+
+into
+
+ exp: exp '+' exp | exp '&' exp;
+
+when there are no actions. This can significantly speed up some
+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.
projects / bison.git / blobdiff