X-Git-Url: https://git.saurik.com/bison.git/blobdiff_plain/728c4be290a95081c272ca917c54987135cde7e3..219139f52178b3e020be1952c59b1ba76009c386:/TODO diff --git a/TODO b/TODO index 8b1d9b31..addd135d 100644 --- a/TODO +++ b/TODO @@ -1,5 +1,201 @@ -*- outline -*- +* Short term +** Use syntax_error from the scanner? +This would provide a means to raise syntax error from function called +from the scanner. Actually, there is no good solution to report a +lexical error in general. Usually they are kept at the scanner level +only, ignoring the guilty token. But that might not be the best bet, +since we don't benefit from the syntactic error recovery. + +We still have the possibility to return an invalid token number, which +does the trick. But then the error message from the parser is poor +(something like "unexpected $undefined"). Since the scanner probably +already reported the error, we should directly enter error-recovery, +without reporting the error message (i.e., YYERROR's semantics). + +Back to lalr1.cc (whose name is now quite unfortunate, since it also +covers lr and ielr), if we support exceptions from yylex, should we +propose a lexical_error in addition to syntax_error? Should they have +a common root, say parse_error? Should syntax_error be renamed +syntactic_error for consistency with lexical_error? + +** Variable names. +What should we name `variant' and `lex_symbol'? + +** Use b4_symbol in all the skeleton +Then remove the older system, including the tables generated by +output.c + +** Update the documentation on gnu.org + +** 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. + +:0: fatal error: opening dependency file .deps/libltdl/argz.Tpo: No such file or directory + + +** 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() << $$; } ; + +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? + +Also, why don't we output the token name of the error token in the +output? It is explicitly skipped: + + /* Skip error token and tokens without identifier. */ + if (sym != errtoken && id) + +Of course there are issues with name spaces, but if we disable we have +something which seems to be more simpler and more consistent instead +of the special case YYERRCODE. + + enum yytokentype { + error = 256, + // ... + }; + + +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 + # include + # include + + 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; + } + +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. + +This shows that it would be interesting to manage to install skeleton +coverage analysis to the test suite. + +** 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. + +* 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. + +** yysyntax_error +The code bw glr.c and yacc.c is really alike, we can certainly factor +some parts. + * Header guards From Franc,ois: should we keep the directory part in the CPP guard? @@ -18,15 +214,15 @@ find something clean (not like YYLSP_NEEDED...). Before releasing, make sure the documentation ("Understanding your parser") refers to the current `output' format. -* lalr1.cc -** vector -Move to using vector, drop stack.hh. - -** I18n -Catch up with yacc.c. - * Report +** Figures +Some statistics about the grammar and the parser would be useful, +especially when asking the user to send some information about the +grammars she is working on. We should probably also include some +information about the variables (I'm not sure for instance we even +specify what LR variant was used). + ** 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 @@ -84,7 +280,7 @@ Note that there remains the problem of locations: `@r'? We should find a means to provide an access to values deep in the stack. For instance, instead of - baz: qux { $$ = $-1 + $0 + $1; } + baz: qux { $$ = $-1 + $0 + $1; } we should be able to have: @@ -99,9 +295,6 @@ 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. -** -D, --define-muscle NAME=VALUE -To define muscles via cli. Or maybe support directly NAME=VALUE? - ** XML Output There are couple of available extensions of Bison targeting some XML output. Some day we should consider including them. One issue is @@ -120,13 +313,13 @@ XML output for GNU Bison * Unit rules Maybe we could expand unit rules, i.e., transform - exp: arith | bool; - arith: exp '+' exp; - bool: exp '&' exp; + exp: arith | bool; + arith: exp '+' exp; + bool: exp '&' exp; into - exp: exp '+' exp | exp '&' exp; + 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 @@ -142,7 +335,8 @@ this issue. Does anybody have it? Some history of Bison and some bibliography would be most welcome. Are there any Texinfo standards for bibliography? - +** %printer +Wow, %printer is not documented. Clearly mark YYPRINT as obsolete. * Java, Fortran, etc. @@ -150,19 +344,19 @@ Are there any Texinfo standards for bibliography? * 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. + 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. + 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. @@ -172,15 +366,14 @@ Show reductions. ** Skeleton strategy Must we keep %token-table? -* src/print_graph.c -Find the best graph parameters. - * BTYacc See if we can integrate backtracking in Bison. Charles-Henri de -Boysson is working on this, and already has some -results. Vadim Maslow, the maintainer of BTYacc was contacted, and we -stay in touch with him. Adjusting the Bison grammar parser will be -needed to support some extra BTYacc features. This is less urgent. +Boysson has been working on this, but never gave +the results. + +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 @@ -195,9 +388,6 @@ very feasible to use the very same conflict tables. ** Adjust the skeletons Import the skeletons for C and C++. -** Improve the skeletons -Have them support yysymprint, yydestruct and so forth. - * Precedence @@ -206,15 +396,6 @@ 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 (sounds like series/parallel orders to me). -** Correlation b/w precedence and associativity -Also, I fail to understand why we have to assign the same -associativity to operators with the same precedence. For instance, -why can't I decide that the precedence of * and / is the same, but the -latter is nonassoc? - -If there is really no profound motivation, we should find a new syntax -to allow specifying this. - ** RR conflicts See if we can use precedence between rules to solve RR conflicts. See what POSIX says. @@ -243,20 +424,6 @@ $$ = $1. I therefore think that one should implement a Bison option where every typed default rule is explicitly written out (same typed ruled can of course be grouped together). -Note: Robert Anisko handles this. He knows how to do it. - - -* Warnings -It would be nice to have warning support. See how Autoconf handles -them, it is fairly well described there. It would be very nice to -implement this in such a way that other programs could use -lib/warnings.[ch]. - -Don't work on this without first announcing you do, as I already have -thought about it, and know many of the components that can be used to -implement it. - - * Pre and post actions. From: Florian Krohm Subject: YYACT_EPILOGUE @@ -288,24 +455,38 @@ 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. +* Complaint submessage indentation. +We already have an implementation that works fairly well for named +reference messages, but it would be nice to use it consistently for all +submessages from Bison. For example, the "previous definition" +submessage or the list of correct values for a %define variable might +look better with indentation. + +However, the current implementation makes the assumption that the +location printed on the first line is not usually much shorter than the +locations printed on the submessage lines that follow. That assumption +may not hold true as often for some kinds of submessages especially if +we ever support multiple grammar files. + +Here's a proposal for how a new implementation might look: + + http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-09/msg00086.html + ----- -Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 Free Software Foundation, -Inc. +Copyright (C) 2001-2004, 2006, 2008-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This file is part of Bison, the GNU Compiler Compiler. -Bison is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify +This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by -the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) -any later version. +the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or +(at your option) any later version. -Bison is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, +This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License -along with Bison; see the file COPYING. If not, write to -the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, -Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA. +along with this program. 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