3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
9 Prefer value_type to semantic_type to denote the semantic value type,
10 specified by the `api.value.type` %define variable.
14 *** Option -H, --header and directive %header
16 The option `-H`/`--header` supersedes the option `--defines`, and the
17 directive %header supersedes %defines. Both `--defines` and `%defines`
18 are, of course, maintained for backward compatibility.
22 Since version 2.4 Bison can be used to generate HTML reports. However it
23 was a two-step process: first bison must be invoked with option `--xml`,
24 and then xsltproc must be run to the convert the XML reports into HTML.
26 The new option `--html` combines these steps. The xsltproc program must
29 *** A C++ native GLR parser
31 A new version of the generated C++ GLR parser was added as "glr2.cc". It
32 is forked from the existing glr.c/cc parser, with the objective of making
33 it a more modern, truly C++ parser (instead of a C++ wrapper around a C
34 parser). Down the line, the goal is to support `%define api.value.type
35 variant` and maybe share code with lalr1.cc.
37 The current parser should be identical in terms of interface, functionality
38 and performance to "glr.cc". To try it out, simply use
44 Counterexamples now show the rule numbers, and always show ε for rules
45 with an empty right-hand side. For instance
57 *** Lookahead correction in Java
59 The Java skeleton (lalr1.java) now supports LAC, via the `parse.lac`
63 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.7.4 (2020-11-14) [stable]
67 *** Bug fixes in yacc.c
69 In Yacc mode, all the tokens are defined twice: once as an enum, and then
70 as a macro. YYEMPTY was missing its macro.
72 *** Bug fixes in lalr1.cc
74 The lalr1.cc skeleton used to emit internal assertions (using YY_ASSERT)
75 even when the `parse.assert` %define variable is not enabled. It no
78 The private internal macro YY_ASSERT now obeys the `api.prefix` %define
81 When there is a very large number of tokens, some assertions could be long
82 enough to hit arbitrary limits in Visual C++. They have been rewritten to
83 work around this limitation.
87 The YYBISON macro in generated "regular C parsers" (from the "yacc.c"
88 skeleton) used to be defined to 1. It is now defined to the version of
89 Bison as an integer (e.g., 30704 for version 3.7.4).
92 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.7.3 (2020-10-13) [stable]
96 Fix concurrent build issues.
98 The bison executable is no longer linked uselessly against libreadline.
100 Fix incorrect use of yytname in glr.cc.
103 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.7.2 (2020-09-05) [stable]
105 This release of Bison fixes all known bugs reported for Bison in MITRE's
106 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system. These vulnerabilities
107 are only about bison-the-program itself, not the generated code.
109 Although these bugs are typically irrelevant to how Bison is used, they
110 are worth fixing if only to give users peace of mind.
112 There is no known vulnerability in the generated parsers.
116 Fix concurrent build issues (introduced in Bison 3.5).
118 Push parsers always use YYMALLOC/YYFREE (no direct calls to malloc/free).
120 Fix portability issues of the test suite, and of bison itself.
122 Some unlikely crashes found by fuzzing have been fixed. This is only
123 about bison itself, not the generated parsers.
126 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.7.1 (2020-08-02) [stable]
130 Crash when a token alias contains a NUL byte.
132 Portability issues with libtextstyle.
134 Portability issues of Bison itself with MSVC.
138 Improvements and fixes in the documentation.
140 More precise location about symbol type redefinitions.
143 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.7 (2020-07-23) [stable]
145 ** Deprecated features
147 The YYPRINT macro, which works only with yacc.c and only for tokens, was
148 obsoleted long ago by %printer, introduced in Bison 1.50 (November 2002).
149 It is deprecated and its support will be removed eventually.
151 In conformance with the recommendations of the Graphviz team, in the next
152 version Bison the option `--graph` will generate a *.gv file by default,
153 instead of *.dot. A transition started in Bison 3.4.
157 *** Counterexample Generation
159 Contributed by Vincent Imbimbo.
161 When given `-Wcounterexamples`/`-Wcex`, bison will now output
162 counterexamples for conflicts.
164 **** Unifying Counterexamples
166 Unifying counterexamples are strings which can be parsed in two ways due
167 to the conflict. For example on a grammar that contains the usual
168 "dangling else" ambiguity:
171 else.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
172 else.y: note: rerun with option '-Wcounterexamples' to generate conflict counterexamples
175 else.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
176 else.y: warning: shift/reduce conflict on token "else" [-Wcounterexamples]
177 Example: "if" exp "then" "if" exp "then" exp • "else" exp
180 ↳ "if" exp "then" exp
181 ↳ "if" exp "then" exp • "else" exp
182 Example: "if" exp "then" "if" exp "then" exp • "else" exp
185 ↳ "if" exp "then" exp "else" exp
186 ↳ "if" exp "then" exp •
188 When text styling is enabled, colors are used in the examples and the
189 derivations to highlight the structure of both analyses. In this case,
191 "if" exp "then" [ "if" exp "then" exp • ] "else" exp
195 "if" exp "then" [ "if" exp "then" exp • "else" exp ]
198 The counterexamples are "focused", in two different ways. First, they do
199 not clutter the output with all the derivations from the start symbol,
200 rather they start on the "conflicted nonterminal". They go straight to the
201 point. Second, they don't "expand" nonterminal symbols uselessly.
203 **** Nonunifying Counterexamples
205 In the case of the dangling else, Bison found an example that can be
206 parsed in two ways (therefore proving that the grammar is ambiguous).
207 When it cannot find such an example, it instead generates two examples
208 that are the same up until the dot:
211 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
212 foo.y: note: rerun with option '-Wcounterexamples' to generate conflict counterexamples
213 foo.y:4.4-7: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
218 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
219 foo.y: warning: shift/reduce conflict on token ID [-Wcounterexamples]
220 First example: expr • ID ',' ID $end
227 Second example: expr • ID $end
233 foo.y:4.4-7: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
237 In these cases, the parser usually doesn't have enough lookahead to
238 differentiate the two given examples.
242 Counterexamples are also included in the report when given
243 `--report=counterexamples`/`-rcex` (or `--report=all`), with more
248 1 exp: "if" exp "then" exp • [$end, "then", "else"]
249 2 | "if" exp "then" exp • "else" exp
251 "else" shift, and go to state 8
253 "else" [reduce using rule 1 (exp)]
254 $default reduce using rule 1 (exp)
256 shift/reduce conflict on token "else":
257 1 exp: "if" exp "then" exp •
258 2 exp: "if" exp "then" exp • "else" exp
259 Example: "if" exp "then" "if" exp "then" exp • "else" exp
262 ↳ "if" exp "then" exp
263 ↳ "if" exp "then" exp • "else" exp
264 Example: "if" exp "then" "if" exp "then" exp • "else" exp
267 ↳ "if" exp "then" exp "else" exp
268 ↳ "if" exp "then" exp •
270 *** File prefix mapping
272 Contributed by Joshua Watt.
274 Bison learned a new argument, `--file-prefix-map OLD=NEW`. Any file path
275 in the output (specifically `#line` directives and `#ifdef` header guards)
276 that begins with the prefix OLD will have it replaced with the prefix NEW,
277 similar to the `-ffile-prefix-map` in GCC. This option can be used to
278 make bison output reproducible.
284 When text styling is enabled and the terminal supports it, the warnings
285 now include hyperlinks to the documentation.
287 *** Relocatable installation
289 When installed to be relocatable (via `configure --enable-relocatable`),
290 bison will now also look for a relocated m4.
294 The `filename_type` %define variable was renamed `api.filename.type`.
297 %define filename_type "symbol"
301 %define api.filename.type {symbol}
303 (Or let `bison --update` do it for you).
305 It now defaults to `const std::string` instead of `std::string`.
307 *** Deprecated %define variable names
309 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
310 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
312 filename_type -> api.filename.type
313 package -> api.package
315 *** Push parsers no longer clear their state when parsing is finished
317 Previously push-parsers cleared their state when parsing was finished (on
318 success and on failure). This made it impossible to check if there were
319 parse errors, since `yynerrs` was also reset. This can be especially
320 troublesome when used in autocompletion, since a parser with error
321 recovery would suggest (irrelevant) expected tokens even if there were
324 Now the parser state can be examined when parsing is finished. The parser
325 state is reset when starting a new parse.
331 The bistromathic demonstrates %param and how to quote sources in the error
335 1.5-7: syntax error: expected end of file or + or - or * or / or ^ before number
341 *** Include the generated header (yacc.c)
343 Historically, when --defines was used, bison generated a header and pasted
344 an exact copy of it into the generated parser implementation file. Since
345 Bison 3.4 it is possible to specify that the header should be `#include`d,
346 and how. For instance
348 %define api.header.include {"parse.h"}
352 %define api.header.include {<parser/parse.h>}
354 Now api.header.include defaults to `"header-basename"`, as was intended in
355 Bison 3.4, where `header-basename` is the basename of the generated
356 header. This is disabled when the generated header is `y.tab.h`, to
357 comply with Automake's ylwrap.
359 *** String aliases are faithfully propagated
361 Bison used to interpret user strings (i.e., decoding backslash escapes)
362 when reading them, and to escape them (i.e., issue non-printable
363 characters as backslash escapes, taking the locale into account) when
364 outputting them. As a consequence non-ASCII strings (say in UTF-8) ended
365 up "ciphered" as sequences of backslash escapes. This happened not only
366 in the generated sources (where the compiler will reinterpret them), but
367 also in all the generated reports (text, xml, html, dot, etc.). Reports
368 were therefore not readable when string aliases were not pure ASCII.
369 Worse yet: the output depended on the user's locale.
371 Now Bison faithfully treats the string aliases exactly the way the user
372 spelled them. This fixes all the aforementioned problems. However, now,
373 string aliases semantically equivalent but syntactically different (e.g.,
374 "A", "\x41", "\101") are considered to be different.
376 *** Crash when generating IELR
378 An old, well hidden, bug in the generation of IELR parsers was fixed.
381 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.6.4 (2020-06-15) [stable]
385 In glr.cc some internal macros leaked in the user's code, and could damage
386 access to the token kinds.
389 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.6.3 (2020-06-03) [stable]
393 Incorrect comments in the generated parsers.
395 Warnings in push parsers (yacc.c).
397 Incorrect display of gotos in LAC traces (lalr1.cc).
400 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.6.2 (2020-05-17) [stable]
404 Some tests were fixed.
406 When token aliases contain comment delimiters:
408 %token FOO "/* foo */"
410 bison used to emit "nested" comments, which is invalid C.
413 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.6.1 (2020-05-10) [stable]
417 Restored ANSI-C compliance in yacc.c.
419 GNU readline portability issues.
421 In C++, yy::parser::symbol_name is now a public member, as was intended.
425 In C++, yy::parser::symbol_type now has a public name() member function.
428 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.6 (2020-05-08) [stable]
430 ** Backward incompatible changes
432 TL;DR: replace "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE 1" by "%define parse.error verbose".
434 The YYERROR_VERBOSE macro is no longer supported; the parsers that still
435 depend on it will now produce Yacc-like error messages (just "syntax
436 error"). It was superseded by the "%error-verbose" directive in Bison
437 1.875 (2003-01-01). Bison 2.6 (2012-07-19) clearly announced that support
438 for YYERROR_VERBOSE would be removed. Note that since Bison 3.0
439 (2013-07-25), "%error-verbose" is deprecated in favor of "%define
440 parse.error verbose".
442 ** Deprecated features
444 The YYPRINT macro, which works only with yacc.c and only for tokens, was
445 obsoleted long ago by %printer, introduced in Bison 1.50 (November 2002).
446 It is deprecated and its support will be removed eventually.
450 *** Improved syntax error messages
452 Two new values for the %define parse.error variable offer more control to
453 the user. Available in all the skeletons (C, C++, Java).
455 **** %define parse.error detailed
457 The behavior of "%define parse.error detailed" is closely resembling that
458 of "%define parse.error verbose" with a few exceptions. First, it is safe
459 to use non-ASCII characters in token aliases (with 'verbose', the result
460 depends on the locale with which bison was run). Second, a yysymbol_name
461 function is exposed to the user, instead of the yytnamerr function and the
462 yytname table. Third, token internationalization is supported (see
465 **** %define parse.error custom
467 With this directive, the user forges and emits the syntax error message
468 herself by defining the yyreport_syntax_error function. A new type,
469 yypcontext_t, captures the circumstances of the error, and provides the
470 user with functions to get details, such as yypcontext_expected_tokens to
471 get the list of expected token kinds.
473 A possible implementation of yyreport_syntax_error is:
476 yyreport_syntax_error (const yypcontext_t *ctx)
479 YY_LOCATION_PRINT (stderr, *yypcontext_location (ctx));
480 fprintf (stderr, ": syntax error");
481 // Report the tokens expected at this point.
483 enum { TOKENMAX = 10 };
484 yysymbol_kind_t expected[TOKENMAX];
485 int n = yypcontext_expected_tokens (ctx, expected, TOKENMAX);
487 // Forward errors to yyparse.
490 for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i)
491 fprintf (stderr, "%s %s",
492 i == 0 ? ": expected" : " or", yysymbol_name (expected[i]));
494 // Report the unexpected token.
496 yysymbol_kind_t lookahead = yypcontext_token (ctx);
497 if (lookahead != YYSYMBOL_YYEMPTY)
498 fprintf (stderr, " before %s", yysymbol_name (lookahead));
500 fprintf (stderr, "\n");
504 **** Token aliases internationalization
506 When the %define variable parse.error is set to `custom` or `detailed`,
507 one may specify which token aliases are to be translated using _(). For
519 In that case the user must define _() and N_(), and yysymbol_name returns
520 the translated symbol (i.e., it returns '_("variable")' rather that
521 '"variable"'). In Java, the user must provide an i18n() function.
523 *** List of expected tokens (yacc.c)
525 Push parsers may invoke yypstate_expected_tokens at any point during
526 parsing (including even before submitting the first token) to get the list
527 of possible tokens. This feature can be used to propose autocompletion
528 (see below the "bistromathic" example).
530 It makes little sense to use this feature without enabling LAC (lookahead
533 *** Returning the error token
535 When the scanner returns an invalid token or the undefined token
536 (YYUNDEF), the parser generates an error message and enters error
537 recovery. Because of that error message, most scanners that find lexical
538 errors generate an error message, and then ignore the invalid input
539 without entering the error-recovery.
541 The scanners may now return YYerror, the error token, to enter the
542 error-recovery mode without triggering an additional error message. See
543 the bistromathic for an example.
545 *** Deep overhaul of the symbol and token kinds
547 To avoid the confusion with types in programming languages, we now refer
548 to token and symbol "kinds" instead of token and symbol "types". The
549 documentation and error messages have been revised.
551 All the skeletons have been updated to use dedicated enum types rather
552 than integral types. Special symbols are now regular citizens, instead of
553 being declared in ad hoc ways.
557 The "token kind" is what is returned by the scanner, e.g., PLUS, NUMBER,
558 LPAREN, etc. While backward compatibility is of course ensured, users are
559 nonetheless invited to replace their uses of "enum yytokentype" by
562 This type now also includes tokens that were previously hidden: YYEOF (end
563 of input), YYUNDEF (undefined token), and YYerror (error token). They
564 now have string aliases, internationalized when internationalization is
565 enabled. Therefore, by default, error messages now refer to "end of file"
566 (internationalized) rather than the cryptic "$end", or to "invalid token"
567 rather than "$undefined".
569 Therefore in most cases it is now useless to define the end-of-line token
572 %token T_EOF 0 "end of file"
574 Rather simply use "YYEOF" in your scanner.
578 The "symbol kinds" is what the parser actually uses. (Unless the
579 api.token.raw %define variable is used, the symbol kind of a terminal
580 differs from the corresponding token kind.)
582 They are now exposed as a enum, "yysymbol_kind_t".
584 This allows users to tailor the error messages the way they want, or to
585 process some symbols in a specific way in autocompletion (see the
586 bistromathic example below).
588 *** Modernize display of explanatory statements in diagnostics
590 Since Bison 2.7, output was indented four spaces for explanatory
591 statements. For example:
593 input.y:2.7-13: error: %type redeclaration for exp
594 input.y:1.7-11: previous declaration
596 Since the introduction of caret-diagnostics, it became less clear. This
597 indentation has been removed and submessages are displayed similarly as in
600 input.y:2.7-13: error: %type redeclaration for exp
601 2 | %type <float> exp
603 input.y:1.7-11: note: previous declaration
607 Contributed by Victor Morales Cayuela.
611 The token and symbol kinds are yy::parser::token_kind_type and
612 yy::parser::symbol_kind_type.
614 The symbol_type::kind() member function allows to get the kind of a
615 symbol. This can be used to write unit tests for scanners, e.g.,
617 yy::parser::symbol_type t = make_NUMBER ("123");
618 assert (t.kind () == yy::parser::symbol_kind::S_NUMBER);
619 assert (t.value.as<int> () == 123);
625 In order to avoid ambiguities with "type" as in "typing", we now refer to
626 the "token kind" (e.g., `PLUS`, `NUMBER`, etc.) rather than the "token
627 type". We now also refer to the "symbol type" (e.g., `PLUS`, `expr`,
632 There are now examples/java: a very simple calculator, and a more complete
633 one (push-parser, location tracking, and debug traces).
635 The lexcalc example (a simple example in C based on Flex and Bison) now
636 also demonstrates location tracking.
639 A new C example, bistromathic, is a fully featured interactive calculator
640 using many Bison features: pure interface, push parser, autocompletion
641 based on the current parser state (using yypstate_expected_tokens),
642 location tracking, internationalized custom error messages, lookahead
643 correction, rich debug traces, etc.
645 It shows how to depend on the symbol kinds to tailor autocompletion. For
646 instance it recognizes the symbol kind "VARIABLE" to propose
647 autocompletion on the existing variables, rather than of the word
651 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.5.4 (2020-04-05) [stable]
653 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
655 TL;DR: replace "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE 1" by "%define parse.error verbose".
657 Bison 3.6 will no longer support the YYERROR_VERBOSE macro; the parsers
658 that still depend on it will produce Yacc-like error messages (just
659 "syntax error"). It was superseded by the "%error-verbose" directive in
660 Bison 1.875 (2003-01-01). Bison 2.6 (2012-07-19) clearly announced that
661 support for YYERROR_VERBOSE would be removed. Note that since Bison 3.0
662 (2013-07-25), "%error-verbose" is deprecated in favor of "%define
663 parse.error verbose".
667 Fix portability issues of the package itself on old compilers.
669 Fix api.token.raw support in Java.
672 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.5.3 (2020-03-08) [stable]
676 Error messages could quote lines containing zero-width characters (such as
677 \005) with incorrect styling. Fixes for similar issues with unexpectedly
678 short lines (e.g., the file was changed between parsing and diagnosing).
680 Some unlikely crashes found by fuzzing have been fixed. This is only
681 about bison itself, not the generated parsers.
684 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.5.2 (2020-02-13) [stable]
688 Portability issues and minor cosmetic issues.
690 The lalr1.cc skeleton properly rejects unsupported values for parse.lac
694 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.5.1 (2020-01-19) [stable]
700 Fix compiler warnings.
703 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.5 (2019-12-11) [stable]
705 ** Backward incompatible changes
707 Lone carriage-return characters (aka \r or ^M) in the grammar files are no
708 longer treated as end-of-lines. This changes the diagnostics, and in
709 particular their locations.
711 In C++, line numbers and columns are now represented as 'int' not
712 'unsigned', so that integer overflow on positions is easily checkable via
713 'gcc -fsanitize=undefined' and the like. This affects the API for
714 positions. The default position and location classes now expose
715 'counter_type' (int), used to define line and column numbers.
717 ** Deprecated features
719 The YYPRINT macro, which works only with yacc.c and only for tokens, was
720 obsoleted long ago by %printer, introduced in Bison 1.50 (November 2002).
721 It is deprecated and its support will be removed eventually.
725 *** Lookahead correction in C++
727 Contributed by Adrian Vogelsgesang.
729 The C++ deterministic skeleton (lalr1.cc) now supports LAC, via the
730 %define variable parse.lac.
732 *** Variable api.token.raw: Optimized token numbers (all skeletons)
734 In the generated parsers, tokens have two numbers: the "external" token
735 number as returned by yylex (which starts at 257), and the "internal"
736 symbol number (which starts at 3). Each time yylex is called, a table
737 lookup maps the external token number to the internal symbol number.
739 When the %define variable api.token.raw is set, tokens are assigned their
740 internal number, which saves one table lookup per token, and also saves
741 the generation of the mapping table.
743 The gain is typically moderate, but in extreme cases (very simple user
744 actions), a 10% improvement can be observed.
746 *** Generated parsers use better types for states
748 Stacks now use the best integral type for state numbers, instead of always
749 using 15 bits. As a result "small" parsers now have a smaller memory
750 footprint (they use 8 bits), and there is support for large automata (16
751 bits), and extra large (using int, i.e., typically 31 bits).
753 *** Generated parsers prefer signed integer types
755 Bison skeletons now prefer signed to unsigned integer types when either
756 will do, as the signed types are less error-prone and allow for better
757 checking with 'gcc -fsanitize=undefined'. Also, the types chosen are now
758 portable to unusual machines where char, short and int are all the same
759 width. On non-GNU platforms this may entail including <limits.h> and (if
760 available) <stdint.h> to define integer types and constants.
762 *** A skeleton for the D programming language
764 For the last few releases, Bison has shipped a stealth experimental
765 skeleton: lalr1.d. It was first contributed by Oliver Mangold, based on
766 Paolo Bonzini's lalr1.java, and was cleaned and improved thanks to
769 However, because nobody has committed to improving, testing, and
770 documenting this skeleton, it is not clear that it will be supported in
773 The lalr1.d skeleton *is functional*, and works well, as demonstrated in
774 examples/d/calc.d. Please try it, enjoy it, and... commit to support it.
776 *** Debug traces in Java
778 The Java backend no longer emits code and data for parser tracing if the
779 %define variable parse.trace is not defined.
783 *** New diagnostic: -Wdangling-alias
785 String literals, which allow for better error messages, are (too)
786 liberally accepted by Bison, which might result in silent errors. For
789 %type <exVal> cond "condition"
791 does not define "condition" as a string alias to 'cond' (nonterminal
792 symbols do not have string aliases). It is rather equivalent to
795 %token <exVal> "condition"
797 i.e., it gives the type 'exVal' to the "condition" token, which was
798 clearly not the intention.
800 Also, because string aliases need not be defined, typos such as "baz"
801 instead of "bar" will be not reported.
803 The option `-Wdangling-alias` catches these situations. On
806 %type <ival> foo "foo"
810 bison -Wdangling-alias reports
812 warning: string literal not attached to a symbol
813 | %type <ival> foo "foo"
815 warning: string literal not attached to a symbol
819 The `-Wall` option does not (yet?) include `-Wdangling-alias`.
821 *** Better POSIX Yacc compatibility diagnostics
823 POSIX Yacc restricts %type to nonterminals. This is now diagnosed by
827 %type <ival> TOKEN1 TOKEN2 't'
834 input.y:2.15-20: warning: POSIX yacc reserves %type to nonterminals [-Wyacc]
835 2 | %type <ival> TOKEN1 TOKEN2 't'
837 input.y:2.29-31: warning: POSIX yacc reserves %type to nonterminals [-Wyacc]
838 2 | %type <ival> TOKEN1 TOKEN2 't'
840 input.y:2.22-27: warning: POSIX yacc reserves %type to nonterminals [-Wyacc]
841 2 | %type <ival> TOKEN1 TOKEN2 't'
844 *** Diagnostics with insertion
846 The diagnostics now display the suggestion below the underlined source.
847 Replacement for undeclared symbols are now also suggested.
854 foo.y:2.7-9: error: symbol 'lis' is used, but is not defined as a token and has no rules; did you mean 'list'?
858 foo.y:2.16: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
862 foo.y: warning: fix-its can be applied. Rerun with option '--update'. [-Wother]
864 *** Diagnostics about long lines
866 Quoted sources may now be truncated to fit the screen. For instance, on a
867 30-column wide terminal:
874 foo.y:1.34-36: warning: symbol FOO redeclared [-Wother]
877 foo.y:1.8-10: previous declaration
880 foo.y:1.62-64: warning: symbol FOO redeclared [-Wother]
883 foo.y:1.8-10: previous declaration
889 *** Debugging glr.c and glr.cc
891 The glr.c skeleton always had asserts to check its own behavior (not the
892 user's). These assertions are now under the control of the parse.assert
893 %define variable (disabled by default).
897 Several new compiler warnings in the generated output have been avoided.
898 Some unused features are no longer emitted. Cleaner generated code in
903 Portability issues in the test suite.
905 In theory, parsers using %nonassoc could crash when reporting verbose
906 error messages. This unlikely bug has been fixed.
908 In Java, %define api.prefix was ignored. It now behaves as expected.
911 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.4.2 (2019-09-12) [stable]
915 In some cases, when warnings are disabled, bison could emit tons of white
916 spaces as diagnostics.
918 When running out of memory, bison could crash (found by fuzzing).
920 When defining twice the EOF token, bison would crash.
922 New warnings from recent compilers have been addressed in the generated
923 parsers (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc).
925 When lone carriage-return characters appeared in the input file,
926 diagnostics could hang forever.
929 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.4.1 (2019-05-22) [stable]
936 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.4 (2019-05-19) [stable]
938 ** Deprecated features
940 The %pure-parser directive is deprecated in favor of '%define api.pure'
941 since Bison 2.3b (2008-05-27), but no warning was issued; there is one
942 now. Note that since Bison 2.7 you are strongly encouraged to use
943 '%define api.pure full' instead of '%define api.pure'.
947 *** Colored diagnostics
949 As an experimental feature, diagnostics are now colored, controlled by the
950 new options --color and --style.
952 To use them, install the libtextstyle library before configuring Bison.
955 https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
959 https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/libtextstyle-0.8.tar.gz
961 The option --color supports the following arguments:
962 - always, yes: Enable colors.
963 - never, no: Disable colors.
964 - auto, tty (default): Enable colors if the output device is a tty.
966 To customize the styles, create a CSS file similar to
970 .error { font-weight: 800; text-decoration: underline; }
973 then invoke bison with --style=bison-bw.css, or set the BISON_STYLE
974 environment variable to "bison-bw.css".
978 When given -fsyntax-only, the diagnostics are reported, but no output is
981 The name of this option is somewhat misleading as bison does more than
982 just checking the syntax: every stage is run (including checking for
983 conflicts for instance), except the generation of the output files.
985 *** Include the generated header (yacc.c)
987 Before, when --defines is used, bison generated a header, and pasted an
988 exact copy of it into the generated parser implementation file. If the
989 header name is not "y.tab.h", it is now #included instead of being
992 To use an '#include' even if the header name is "y.tab.h" (which is what
993 happens with --yacc, or when using the Autotools' ylwrap), define
994 api.header.include to the exact argument to pass to #include. For
997 %define api.header.include {"parse.h"}
1001 %define api.header.include {<parser/parse.h>}
1003 *** api.location.type is now supported in C (yacc.c, glr.c)
1005 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
1006 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer defines YYLTYPE.
1008 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their
1009 definition of locations: let one of them generate them, and the others
1016 In conformance with the recommendations of the Graphviz team, if %require
1017 "3.4" (or better) is specified, the option --graph generates a *.gv file
1018 by default, instead of *.dot.
1020 *** Diagnostics overhaul
1022 Column numbers were wrong with multibyte characters, which would also
1023 result in skewed diagnostics with carets. Beside, because we were
1024 indenting the quoted source with a single space, lines with tab characters
1025 were incorrectly underlined.
1027 To address these issues, and to be clearer, Bison now issues diagnostics
1028 as GCC9 does. For instance it used to display (there's a tab before the
1031 foo.y:3.37-38: error: $2 of ‘expr’ has no declared type
1032 expr: expr '+' "number" { $$ = $1 + $2; }
1036 foo.y:3.37-38: error: $2 of ‘expr’ has no declared type
1037 3 | expr: expr '+' "number" { $$ = $1 + $2; }
1040 Other constructs now also have better locations, resulting in more precise
1043 *** Fix-it hints for %empty
1045 Running Bison with -Wempty-rules and --update will remove incorrect %empty
1046 annotations, and add the missing ones.
1048 *** Generated reports
1050 The format of the reports (parse.output) was improved for readability.
1052 *** Better support for --no-line.
1054 When --no-line is used, the generated files are now cleaner: no lines are
1055 generated instead of empty lines. Together with using api.header.include,
1056 that should help people saving the generated files into version control
1057 systems get smaller diffs.
1061 A new example in C shows an simple infix calculator with a hand-written
1062 scanner (examples/c/calc).
1064 A new example in C shows a reentrant parser (capable of recursive calls)
1065 built with Flex and Bison (examples/c/reccalc).
1067 There is a new section about the history of Yaccs and Bison.
1071 A few obscure bugs were fixed, including the second oldest (known) bug in
1072 Bison: it was there when Bison was entered in the RCS version control
1073 system, in December 1987. See the NEWS of Bison 3.3 for the previous
1077 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.3.2 (2019-02-03) [stable]
1081 Bison 3.3 failed to generate parsers for grammars with unused nonterminal
1085 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.3.1 (2019-01-27) [stable]
1089 The option -y/--yacc used to imply -Werror=yacc, which turns uses of Bison
1090 extensions into errors. It now makes them simple warnings (-Wyacc).
1093 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.3 (2019-01-26) [stable]
1095 A new mailing list was created, Bison Announce. It is low traffic, and is
1096 only about announcing new releases and important messages (e.g., polls
1097 about major decisions to make).
1099 https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bison-announce
1101 ** Backward incompatible changes
1103 Support for DJGPP, which has been unmaintained and untested for years, is
1106 ** Deprecated features
1108 A new feature, --update (see below) helps adjusting existing grammars to
1111 *** Deprecated directives
1113 The %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of '%define
1114 parse.error verbose' since Bison 3.0, but no warning was issued.
1116 The '%name-prefix "xx"' directive is deprecated in favor of '%define
1117 api.prefix {xx}' since Bison 3.0, but no warning was issued. These
1118 directives are slightly different, you might need to adjust your code.
1119 %name-prefix renames only symbols with external linkage, while api.prefix
1120 also renames types and macros, including YYDEBUG, YYTOKENTYPE,
1121 yytokentype, YYSTYPE, YYLTYPE, etc.
1123 Users of Flex that move from '%name-prefix "xx"' to '%define api.prefix
1124 {xx}' will typically have to update YY_DECL from
1126 #define YY_DECL int xxlex (YYSTYPE *yylval, YYLTYPE *yylloc)
1130 #define YY_DECL int xxlex (XXSTYPE *yylval, XXLTYPE *yylloc)
1132 *** Deprecated %define variable names
1134 The following variables, mostly related to parsers in Java, have been
1135 renamed for consistency. Backward compatibility is ensured, but upgrading
1138 abstract -> api.parser.abstract
1139 annotations -> api.parser.annotations
1140 extends -> api.parser.extends
1141 final -> api.parser.final
1142 implements -> api.parser.implements
1143 parser_class_name -> api.parser.class
1144 public -> api.parser.public
1145 strictfp -> api.parser.strictfp
1149 *** Generation of fix-its for IDEs/Editors
1151 When given the new option -ffixit (aka -fdiagnostics-parseable-fixits),
1152 bison now generates machine readable editing instructions to fix some
1153 issues. Currently, this is mostly limited to updating deprecated
1154 directives and removing duplicates. For instance:
1158 %define parser_class_name "Parser"
1159 %define api.parser.class "Parser"
1163 See the "fix-it:" lines below:
1165 $ bison -ffixit foo.y
1166 foo.y:1.1-14: warning: deprecated directive, use '%define parse.error verbose' [-Wdeprecated]
1169 fix-it:"foo.y":{1:1-1:15}:"%define parse.error verbose"
1170 foo.y:2.1-34: warning: deprecated directive, use '%define api.parser.class {Parser}' [-Wdeprecated]
1171 %define parser_class_name "Parser"
1172 ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1173 fix-it:"foo.y":{2:1-2:35}:"%define api.parser.class {Parser}"
1174 foo.y:3.1-33: error: %define variable 'api.parser.class' redefined
1175 %define api.parser.class "Parser"
1176 ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1177 foo.y:2.1-34: previous definition
1178 %define parser_class_name "Parser"
1179 ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1180 fix-it:"foo.y":{3:1-3:34}:""
1181 foo.y: warning: fix-its can be applied. Rerun with option '--update'. [-Wother]
1183 This uses the same output format as GCC and Clang.
1185 *** Updating grammar files
1187 Fixes can be applied on the fly. The previous example ends with the
1188 suggestion to re-run bison with the option -u/--update, which results in a
1189 cleaner grammar file.
1191 $ bison --update foo.y
1193 bison: file 'foo.y' was updated (backup: 'foo.y~')
1196 %define parse.error verbose
1197 %define api.parser.class {Parser}
1201 *** Bison is now relocatable
1203 If you pass '--enable-relocatable' to 'configure', Bison is relocatable.
1205 A relocatable program can be moved or copied to a different location on
1206 the file system. It can also be used through mount points for network
1207 sharing. It is possible to make symbolic links to the installed and moved
1208 programs, and invoke them through the symbolic link.
1210 *** %expect and %expect-rr modifiers on individual rules
1212 One can now document (and check) which rules participate in shift/reduce
1213 and reduce/reduce conflicts. This is particularly important GLR parsers,
1214 where conflicts are a normal occurrence. For example,
1230 | argument_list ',' expression
1235 Looking at the output from -v, one can see that the shift/reduce conflict
1236 here is due to the fact that the parser does not know whether to reduce
1237 arguments to argument_list until it sees the token _after_ the following
1238 ','. By marking the rule with %expect 1 (because there is a conflict in
1239 one state), we document the source of the 1 overall shift/reduce conflict.
1241 In GLR parsers, we can use %expect-rr in a rule for reduce/reduce
1242 conflicts. In this case, we mark each of the conflicting rules. For
1251 target_list '=' expr ';'
1257 | target ',' target_list
1266 | expr ',' expr_list
1274 In a statement such as
1278 the parser must reduce x to a target or an expr, but does not know which
1279 until it sees the '='. So we notate the two possible reductions to
1280 indicate that each conflicts in one rule.
1282 This feature needs user feedback, and might evolve in the future.
1284 *** C++: Actual token constructors
1286 When variants and token constructors are enabled, in addition to the
1287 type-safe named token constructors (make_ID, make_INT, etc.), we now
1288 generate genuine constructors for symbol_type.
1290 For instance with these declarations
1296 you may use these constructors:
1298 symbol_type (int token, const std::string&);
1299 symbol_type (int token, const int&);
1300 symbol_type (int token);
1302 Correct matching between token types and value types is checked via
1303 'assert'; for instance, 'symbol_type (ID, 42)' would abort. Named
1304 constructors are preferable, as they offer better type safety (for
1305 instance 'make_ID (42)' would not even compile), but symbol_type
1306 constructors may help when token types are discovered at run-time, e.g.,
1309 if (auto i = lookup_keyword (yytext))
1310 return yy::parser::symbol_type (i);
1312 return yy::parser::make_ID (yytext);
1315 *** C++: Variadic emplace
1317 If your application requires C++11 and you don't use symbol constructors,
1318 you may now use a variadic emplace for semantic values:
1320 %define api.value.type variant
1321 %token <std::pair<int, int>> PAIR
1325 int yylex (parser::semantic_type *lvalp)
1327 lvalp->emplace <std::pair<int, int>> (1, 2);
1328 return parser::token::PAIR;
1331 *** C++: Syntax error exceptions in GLR
1333 The glr.cc skeleton now supports syntax_error exceptions thrown from user
1334 actions, or from the scanner.
1336 *** More POSIX Yacc compatibility warnings
1338 More Bison specific directives are now reported with -y or -Wyacc. This
1339 change was ready since the release of Bison 3.0 in September 2015. It was
1340 delayed because Autoconf used to define YACC as `bison -y`, which resulted
1341 in numerous warnings for Bison users that use the GNU Build System.
1343 If you still experience that problem, either redefine YACC as `bison -o
1344 y.tab.c`, or pass -Wno-yacc to Bison.
1346 *** The tables yyrhs and yyphrs are back
1348 Because no Bison skeleton uses them, these tables were removed (no longer
1349 passed to the skeletons, not even computed) in 2008. However, some users
1350 have expressed interest in being able to use them in their own skeletons.
1354 *** Incorrect number of reduce/reduce conflicts
1356 On a grammar such as
1358 exp: "num" | "num" | "num"
1360 bison used to report a single RR conflict, instead of two. This is now
1361 fixed. This was the oldest (known) bug in Bison: it was there when Bison
1362 was entered in the RCS version control system, in December 1987.
1364 Some grammar files might have to adjust their %expect-rr.
1366 *** Parser directives that were not careful enough
1368 Passing invalid arguments to %nterm, for instance character literals, used
1369 to result in unclear error messages.
1373 The examples/ directory (installed in .../share/doc/bison/examples) has
1374 been restructured per language for clarity. The examples come with a
1375 README and a Makefile. Not only can they be used to toy with Bison, they
1376 can also be starting points for your own grammars.
1378 There is now a Java example, and a simple example in C based on Flex and
1379 Bison (examples/c/lexcalc/).
1385 They now use noexcept and constexpr. Please, report missing annotations.
1387 *** Symbol Declarations
1389 The syntax of the variation directives to declare symbols was overhauled
1390 for more consistency, and also better POSIX Yacc compliance (which, for
1391 instance, allows "%type" without actually providing a type). The %nterm
1392 directive, supported by Bison since its inception, is now documented and
1393 officially supported.
1395 The syntax is now as follows:
1397 %token TAG? ( ID NUMBER? STRING? )+ ( TAG ( ID NUMBER? STRING? )+ )*
1398 %left TAG? ( ID NUMBER? )+ ( TAG ( ID NUMBER? )+ )*
1399 %type TAG? ( ID | CHAR | STRING )+ ( TAG ( ID | CHAR | STRING )+ )*
1400 %nterm TAG? ID+ ( TAG ID+ )*
1402 where TAG denotes a type tag such as ‘<ival>’, ID denotes an identifier
1403 such as ‘NUM’, NUMBER a decimal or hexadecimal integer such as ‘300’ or
1404 ‘0x12d’, CHAR a character literal such as ‘'+'’, and STRING a string
1405 literal such as ‘"number"’. The post-fix quantifiers are ‘?’ (zero or
1406 one), ‘*’ (zero or more) and ‘+’ (one or more).
1409 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.2.4 (2018-12-24) [stable]
1413 Fix the move constructor of symbol_type.
1415 Always provide a copy constructor for symbol_type, even in modern C++.
1418 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.2.3 (2018-12-18) [stable]
1422 Properly support token constructors in C++ with types that include commas
1423 (e.g., std::pair<int, int>). A regression introduced in Bison 3.2.
1426 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.2.2 (2018-11-21) [stable]
1430 C++ portability issues.
1433 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.2.1 (2018-11-09) [stable]
1437 Several portability issues have been fixed in the build system, in the
1438 test suite, and in the generated parsers in C++.
1441 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.2 (2018-10-29) [stable]
1443 ** Backward incompatible changes
1445 Support for DJGPP, which has been unmaintained and untested for years, is
1446 obsolete. Unless there is activity to revive it, it will be removed.
1450 %printers should use yyo rather than yyoutput to denote the output stream.
1452 Variant-based symbols in C++ should use emplace() rather than build().
1454 In C++ parsers, parser::operator() is now a synonym for the parser::parse.
1458 A new section, "A Simple C++ Example", is a tutorial for parsers in C++.
1460 A comment in the generated code now emphasizes that users should not
1461 depend upon non-documented implementation details, such as macros starting
1466 *** C++: Support for move semantics (lalr1.cc)
1468 The lalr1.cc skeleton now fully supports C++ move semantics, while
1469 maintaining compatibility with C++98. You may now store move-only types
1470 when using Bison's variants. For instance:
1477 %skeleton "lalr1.cc"
1478 %define api.value.type variant
1482 %token <int> INT "int";
1483 %type <std::unique_ptr<int>> int;
1484 %type <std::vector<std::unique_ptr<int>>> list;
1488 | list int { $$ = std::move($1); $$.emplace_back(std::move($2)); }
1490 int: "int" { $$ = std::make_unique<int>($1); }
1492 *** C++: Implicit move of right-hand side values (lalr1.cc)
1494 In modern C++ (C++11 and later), you should always use 'std::move' with
1495 the values of the right-hand side symbols ($1, $2, etc.), as they will be
1496 popped from the stack anyway. Using 'std::move' is mandatory for
1497 move-only types such as unique_ptr, and it provides a significant speedup
1498 for large types such as std::string, or std::vector, etc.
1500 If '%define api.value.automove' is set, every occurrence '$n' is replaced
1501 by 'std::move ($n)'. The second rule in the previous grammar can be
1504 list: list int { $$ = $1; $$.emplace_back($2); }
1506 With automove enabled, the semantic values are no longer lvalues, so do
1507 not use the swap idiom:
1509 list: list int { std::swap($$, $1); $$.emplace_back($2); }
1511 This idiom is anyway obsolete: it is preferable to move than to swap.
1513 A warning is issued when automove is enabled, and a value is used several
1516 input.yy:16.31-32: warning: multiple occurrences of $2 with api.value.automove enabled [-Wother]
1517 exp: "twice" exp { $$ = $2 + $2; }
1520 Enabling api.value.automove does not require support for modern C++. The
1521 generated code is valid C++98/03, but will use copies instead of moves.
1523 The new examples/c++/variant-11.yy shows these features in action.
1525 *** C++: The implicit default semantic action is always run
1527 When variants are enabled, the default action was not run, so
1535 It now behaves like in all the other cases, as
1537 exp: "number" { $$ = $1; }
1539 possibly using std::move if automove is enabled.
1541 We do not expect backward compatibility issues. However, beware of
1542 forward compatibility issues: if you rely on default actions with
1543 variants, be sure to '%require "3.2"' to avoid older versions of Bison to
1544 generate incorrect parsers.
1546 *** C++: Renaming location.hh
1548 When both %defines and %locations are enabled, Bison generates a
1549 location.hh file. If you don't use locations outside of the parser, you
1550 may avoid its creation with:
1552 %define api.location.file none
1554 However this file is useful if, for instance, your parser builds an AST
1555 decorated with locations: you may use Bison's location independently of
1556 Bison's parser. You can now give it another name, for instance:
1558 %define api.location.file "my-location.hh"
1560 This name can have directory components, and even be absolute. The name
1561 under which the location file is included is controlled by
1562 api.location.include.
1564 This way it is possible to have several parsers share the same location
1567 For instance, in src/foo/parser.hh, generate the include/ast/loc.hh file:
1570 %define api.namespace {foo}
1571 %define api.location.file "include/ast/loc.hh"
1572 %define api.location.include {<ast/loc.hh>}
1574 and use it in src/bar/parser.hh:
1577 %define api.namespace {bar}
1578 %code requires {#include <ast/loc.hh>}
1579 %define api.location.type {bar::location}
1581 Absolute file names are supported, so in your Makefile, passing the flag
1582 -Dapi.location.file='"$(top_srcdir)/include/ast/location.hh"' to bison is
1585 *** C++: stack.hh and position.hh are deprecated
1587 When asked to generate a header file (%defines), the lalr1.cc skeleton
1588 generates a stack.hh file. This file had no interest for users; it is now
1589 made useless: its content is included in the parser definition. It is
1590 still generated for backward compatibility.
1592 When in addition to %defines, location support is requested (%locations),
1593 the file position.hh is also generated. It is now also useless: its
1594 content is now included in location.hh.
1596 These files are no longer generated when your grammar file requires at
1597 least Bison 3.2 (%require "3.2").
1601 Portability issues on MinGW and VS2015.
1603 Portability issues in the test suite.
1605 Portability/warning issues with Flex.
1608 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.1 (2018-08-27) [stable]
1610 ** Backward incompatible changes
1612 Compiling Bison now requires a C99 compiler---as announced during the
1613 release of Bison 3.0, five years ago. Generated parsers do not require a
1616 Support for DJGPP, which has been unmaintained and untested for years, is
1617 obsolete. Unless there is activity to revive it, the next release of Bison
1618 will have it removed.
1622 *** Typed midrule actions
1624 Because their type is unknown to Bison, the values of midrule actions are
1625 not treated like the others: they don't have %printer and %destructor
1626 support. It also prevents C++ (Bison) variants to handle them properly.
1628 Typed midrule actions address these issues. Instead of:
1630 exp: { $<ival>$ = 1; } { $<ival>$ = 2; } { $$ = $<ival>1 + $<ival>2; }
1634 exp: <ival>{ $$ = 1; } <ival>{ $$ = 2; } { $$ = $1 + $2; }
1636 *** Reports include the type of the symbols
1638 The sections about terminal and nonterminal symbols of the '*.output' file
1639 now specify their declared type. For instance, for:
1643 the report now shows '<ival>':
1645 Terminals, with rules where they appear
1649 *** Diagnostics about useless rules
1651 In the following grammar, the 'exp' nonterminal is trivially useless. So,
1652 of course, its rules are useless too.
1656 exp: exp '+' exp | exp '-' exp | '(' exp ')'
1658 Previously all the useless rules were reported, including those whose
1659 left-hand side is the 'exp' nonterminal:
1661 warning: 1 nonterminal useless in grammar [-Wother]
1662 warning: 4 rules useless in grammar [-Wother]
1663 2.14-16: warning: nonterminal useless in grammar: exp [-Wother]
1666 2.14-16: warning: rule useless in grammar [-Wother]
1669 3.6-16: warning: rule useless in grammar [-Wother]
1670 exp: exp '+' exp | exp '-' exp | '(' exp ')'
1672 3.20-30: warning: rule useless in grammar [-Wother]
1673 exp: exp '+' exp | exp '-' exp | '(' exp ')'
1675 3.34-44: warning: rule useless in grammar [-Wother]
1676 exp: exp '+' exp | exp '-' exp | '(' exp ')'
1679 Now, rules whose left-hand side symbol is useless are no longer reported
1680 as useless. The locations of the errors have also been adjusted to point
1681 to the first use of the nonterminal as a left-hand side of a rule:
1683 warning: 1 nonterminal useless in grammar [-Wother]
1684 warning: 4 rules useless in grammar [-Wother]
1685 3.1-3: warning: nonterminal useless in grammar: exp [-Wother]
1686 exp: exp '+' exp | exp '-' exp | '(' exp ')'
1688 2.14-16: warning: rule useless in grammar [-Wother]
1692 *** C++: Generated parsers can be compiled with -fno-exceptions (lalr1.cc)
1694 When compiled with exceptions disabled, the generated parsers no longer
1695 uses try/catch clauses.
1697 Currently only GCC and Clang are supported.
1701 *** A demonstration of variants
1703 A new example was added (installed in .../share/doc/bison/examples),
1704 'variant.yy', which shows how to use (Bison) variants in C++.
1706 The other examples were made nicer to read.
1708 *** Some features are no longer 'experimental'
1710 The following features, mature enough, are no longer flagged as
1711 experimental in the documentation: push parsers, default %printer and
1712 %destructor (typed: <*> and untyped: <>), %define api.value.type union and
1713 variant, Java parsers, XML output, LR family (lr, ielr, lalr), and
1714 semantic predicates (%?).
1718 *** GLR: Predicates support broken by #line directives
1720 Predicates (%?) in GLR such as
1723 %? {new_syntax} 'w' id new_args
1724 | %?{!new_syntax} 'w' id old_args
1726 were issued with #lines in the middle of C code.
1728 *** Printer and destructor with broken #line directives
1730 The #line directives were not properly escaped when emitting the code for
1731 %printer/%destructor, which resulted in compiler errors if there are
1732 backslashes or double-quotes in the grammar file name.
1734 *** Portability on ICC
1736 The Intel compiler claims compatibility with GCC, yet rejects its _Pragma.
1737 Generated parsers now work around this.
1741 There were several small fixes in the test suite and in the build system,
1742 many warnings in bison and in the generated parsers were eliminated. The
1743 documentation also received its share of minor improvements.
1745 Useless code was removed from C++ parsers, and some of the generated
1746 constructors are more 'natural'.
1749 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.5 (2018-05-27) [stable]
1753 *** C++: Fix support of 'syntax_error'
1755 One incorrect 'inline' resulted in linking errors about the constructor of
1756 the syntax_error exception.
1758 *** C++: Fix warnings
1760 GCC 7.3 (with -O1 or -O2 but not -O0 or -O3) issued null-dereference
1761 warnings about yyformat being possibly null. It also warned about the
1762 deprecated implicit definition of copy constructors when there's a
1763 user-defined (copy) assignment operator.
1765 *** Location of errors
1767 In C++ parsers, out-of-bounds errors can happen when a rule with an empty
1768 ride-hand side raises a syntax error. The behavior of the default parser
1769 (yacc.c) in such a condition was undefined.
1771 Now all the parsers match the behavior of glr.c: @$ is used as the
1772 location of the error. This handles gracefully rules with and without
1775 *** Portability fixes in the test suite
1777 On some platforms, some Java and/or C++ tests were failing.
1780 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.4 (2015-01-23) [stable]
1784 *** C++ with Variants (lalr1.cc)
1786 Fix a compiler warning when no %destructor use $$.
1790 Several portability issues in tests were fixed.
1793 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.3 (2015-01-15) [stable]
1797 *** C++ with Variants (lalr1.cc)
1799 Problems with %destructor and '%define parse.assert' have been fixed.
1801 *** Named %union support (yacc.c, glr.c)
1803 Bison 3.0 introduced a regression on named %union such as
1805 %union foo { int ival; };
1807 The possibility to use a name was introduced "for Yacc compatibility".
1808 It is however not required by POSIX Yacc, and its usefulness is not clear.
1810 *** %define api.value.type union with %defines (yacc.c, glr.c)
1812 The C parsers were broken when %defines was used together with "%define
1813 api.value.type union".
1815 *** Redeclarations are reported in proper order
1823 bison used to report:
1825 foo.yy:2.10-11: error: %printer redeclaration for FOO
1828 foo.yy:3.10-11: previous declaration
1832 Now, the "previous" declaration is always the first one.
1837 Bison now installs various files in its docdir (which defaults to
1838 '/usr/local/share/doc/bison'), including the three fully blown examples
1839 extracted from the documentation:
1842 Reverse Polish Calculator, a simple introductory example.
1844 Multi-function Calc, a calculator with memory and functions and located
1847 a calculator in C++ using variant support and token constructors.
1850 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.2 (2013-12-05) [stable]
1854 *** Generated source files when errors are reported
1856 When warnings are issued and -Werror is set, bison would still generate
1857 the source files (*.c, *.h...). As a consequence, some runs of "make"
1858 could fail the first time, but not the second (as the files were generated
1861 This is fixed: bison no longer generates this source files, but, of
1862 course, still produces the various reports (*.output, *.xml, etc.).
1864 *** %empty is used in reports
1866 Empty right-hand sides are denoted by '%empty' in all the reports (text,
1867 dot, XML and formats derived from it).
1869 *** YYERROR and variants
1871 When C++ variant support is enabled, an error triggered via YYERROR, but
1872 not caught via error recovery, resulted in a double deletion.
1875 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0.1 (2013-11-12) [stable]
1879 *** Errors in caret diagnostics
1881 On some platforms, some errors could result in endless diagnostics.
1883 *** Fixes of the -Werror option
1885 Options such as "-Werror -Wno-error=foo" were still turning "foo"
1886 diagnostics into errors instead of warnings. This is fixed.
1888 Actually, for consistency with GCC, "-Wno-error=foo -Werror" now also
1889 leaves "foo" diagnostics as warnings. Similarly, with "-Werror=foo
1890 -Wno-error", "foo" diagnostics are now errors.
1894 As demonstrated in the documentation, one can now leave spaces between
1899 The yacc.1 man page is no longer installed if --disable-yacc was
1902 *** Fixes in the test suite
1904 Bugs and portability issues.
1907 * Noteworthy changes in release 3.0 (2013-07-25) [stable]
1909 ** WARNING: Future backward-incompatibilities!
1911 Like other GNU packages, Bison will start using some of the C99 features
1912 for its own code, especially the definition of variables after statements.
1913 The generated C parsers still aim at C90.
1915 ** Backward incompatible changes
1917 *** Obsolete features
1919 Support for YYFAIL is removed (deprecated in Bison 2.4.2): use YYERROR.
1921 Support for yystype and yyltype is removed (deprecated in Bison 1.875):
1922 use YYSTYPE and YYLTYPE.
1924 Support for YYLEX_PARAM and YYPARSE_PARAM is removed (deprecated in Bison
1925 1.875): use %lex-param, %parse-param, or %param.
1927 Missing semicolons at the end of actions are no longer added (as announced
1928 in the release 2.5).
1930 *** Use of YACC='bison -y'
1932 TL;DR: With Autoconf <= 2.69, pass -Wno-yacc to (AM_)YFLAGS if you use
1935 Traditional Yacc generates 'y.tab.c' whatever the name of the input file.
1936 Therefore Makefiles written for Yacc expect 'y.tab.c' (and possibly
1937 'y.tab.h' and 'y.output') to be generated from 'foo.y'.
1939 To this end, for ages, AC_PROG_YACC, Autoconf's macro to look for an
1940 implementation of Yacc, was using Bison as 'bison -y'. While it does
1941 ensure compatible output file names, it also enables warnings for
1942 incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc. In other words, 'bison -y' triggers
1943 warnings for Bison extensions.
1945 Autoconf 2.70+ fixes this incompatibility by using YACC='bison -o y.tab.c'
1946 (which also generates 'y.tab.h' and 'y.output' when needed).
1947 Alternatively, disable Yacc warnings by passing '-Wno-yacc' to your Yacc
1948 flags (YFLAGS, or AM_YFLAGS with Automake).
1952 *** The epilogue is no longer affected by internal #defines (glr.c)
1954 The glr.c skeleton uses defines such as #define yylval (yystackp->yyval) in
1955 generated code. These weren't properly undefined before the inclusion of
1956 the user epilogue, so functions such as the following were butchered by the
1957 preprocessor expansion:
1959 int yylex (YYSTYPE *yylval);
1961 This is fixed: yylval, yynerrs, yychar, and yylloc are now valid
1962 identifiers for user-provided variables.
1964 *** stdio.h is no longer needed when locations are enabled (yacc.c)
1966 Changes in Bison 2.7 introduced a dependency on FILE and fprintf when
1967 locations are enabled. This is fixed.
1969 *** Warnings about useless %pure-parser/%define api.pure are restored
1971 ** Diagnostics reported by Bison
1973 Most of these features were contributed by Théophile Ranquet and Victor
1978 Version 2.7 introduced caret errors, for a prettier output. These are now
1979 activated by default. The old format can still be used by invoking Bison
1980 with -fno-caret (or -fnone).
1982 Some error messages that reproduced excerpts of the grammar are now using
1983 the caret information only. For instance on:
1990 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
1991 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts: exp: 'a' [-Wother]
1995 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
1996 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
2000 and "bison -fno-caret" reports:
2002 in.y: warning: 1 reduce/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-rr]
2003 in.y:2.12-14: warning: rule useless in parser due to conflicts [-Wother]
2005 *** Enhancements of the -Werror option
2007 The -Werror=CATEGORY option is now recognized, and will treat specified
2008 warnings as errors. The warnings need not have been explicitly activated
2009 using the -W option, this is similar to what GCC 4.7 does.
2011 For example, given the following command line, Bison will treat both
2012 warnings related to POSIX Yacc incompatibilities and S/R conflicts as
2013 errors (and only those):
2015 $ bison -Werror=yacc,error=conflicts-sr input.y
2017 If no categories are specified, -Werror will make all active warnings into
2018 errors. For example, the following line does the same the previous example:
2020 $ bison -Werror -Wnone -Wyacc -Wconflicts-sr input.y
2022 (By default -Wconflicts-sr,conflicts-rr,deprecated,other is enabled.)
2024 Note that the categories in this -Werror option may not be prefixed with
2025 "no-". However, -Wno-error[=CATEGORY] is valid.
2027 Note that -y enables -Werror=yacc. Therefore it is now possible to require
2028 Yacc-like behavior (e.g., always generate y.tab.c), but to report
2029 incompatibilities as warnings: "-y -Wno-error=yacc".
2031 *** The display of warnings is now richer
2033 The option that controls a given warning is now displayed:
2035 foo.y:4.6: warning: type clash on default action: <foo> != <bar> [-Wother]
2037 In the case of warnings treated as errors, the prefix is changed from
2038 "warning: " to "error: ", and the suffix is displayed, in a manner similar
2039 to GCC, as [-Werror=CATEGORY].
2041 For instance, where the previous version of Bison would report (and exit
2044 bison: warnings being treated as errors
2045 input.y:1.1: warning: stray ',' treated as white space
2049 input.y:1.1: error: stray ',' treated as white space [-Werror=other]
2051 *** Deprecated constructs
2053 The new 'deprecated' warning category flags obsolete constructs whose
2054 support will be discontinued. It is enabled by default. These warnings
2055 used to be reported as 'other' warnings.
2057 *** Useless semantic types
2059 Bison now warns about useless (uninhabited) semantic types. Since
2060 semantic types are not declared to Bison (they are defined in the opaque
2061 %union structure), it is %printer/%destructor directives about useless
2062 types that trigger the warning:
2066 %printer {} <type1> <type3>
2067 %destructor {} <type2> <type4>
2069 nterm: term { $$ = $1; };
2071 3.28-34: warning: type <type3> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
2072 4.28-34: warning: type <type4> is used, but is not associated to any symbol
2074 *** Undefined but unused symbols
2076 Bison used to raise an error for undefined symbols that are not used in
2077 the grammar. This is now only a warning.
2080 %destructor {} symbol2
2081 %type <type> symbol3
2085 *** Useless destructors or printers
2087 Bison now warns about useless destructors or printers. In the following
2088 example, the printer for <type1>, and the destructor for <type2> are
2089 useless: all symbols of <type1> (token1) already have a printer, and all
2090 symbols of type <type2> (token2) already have a destructor.
2092 %token <type1> token1
2096 %printer {} token1 <type1> <type3>
2097 %destructor {} token2 <type2> <type4>
2101 The warnings and error messages about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce
2102 conflicts have been normalized. For instance on the following foo.y file:
2106 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
2108 compare the previous version of bison:
2111 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
2112 $ bison -Werror foo.y
2113 bison: warnings being treated as errors
2114 foo.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
2116 with the new behavior:
2119 foo.y: warning: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Wconflicts-sr]
2120 foo.y: warning: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Wconflicts-rr]
2121 $ bison -Werror foo.y
2122 foo.y: error: 1 shift/reduce conflict [-Werror=conflicts-sr]
2123 foo.y: error: 2 reduce/reduce conflicts [-Werror=conflicts-rr]
2125 When %expect or %expect-rr is used, such as with bar.y:
2130 exp: exp '+' exp | '0' | '0';
2135 bar.y: conflicts: 1 shift/reduce, 2 reduce/reduce
2136 bar.y: expected 0 shift/reduce conflicts
2137 bar.y: expected 0 reduce/reduce conflicts
2142 bar.y: error: shift/reduce conflicts: 1 found, 0 expected
2143 bar.y: error: reduce/reduce conflicts: 2 found, 0 expected
2145 ** Incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc
2147 The 'yacc' category is no longer part of '-Wall', enable it explicitly
2150 ** Additional yylex/yyparse arguments
2152 The new directive %param declares additional arguments to both yylex and
2153 yyparse. The %lex-param, %parse-param, and %param directives support one
2154 or more arguments. Instead of
2156 %lex-param {arg1_type *arg1}
2157 %lex-param {arg2_type *arg2}
2158 %parse-param {arg1_type *arg1}
2159 %parse-param {arg2_type *arg2}
2163 %param {arg1_type *arg1} {arg2_type *arg2}
2165 ** Types of values for %define variables
2167 Bison used to make no difference between '%define foo bar' and '%define
2168 foo "bar"'. The former is now called a 'keyword value', and the latter a
2169 'string value'. A third kind was added: 'code values', such as '%define
2172 Keyword variables are used for fixed value sets, e.g.,
2174 %define lr.type lalr
2176 Code variables are used for value in the target language, e.g.,
2178 %define api.value.type {struct semantic_type}
2180 String variables are used remaining cases, e.g. file names.
2182 ** Variable api.token.prefix
2184 The variable api.token.prefix changes the way tokens are identified in
2185 the generated files. This is especially useful to avoid collisions
2186 with identifiers in the target language. For instance
2188 %token FILE for ERROR
2189 %define api.token.prefix {TOK_}
2191 start: FILE for ERROR;
2193 will generate the definition of the symbols TOK_FILE, TOK_for, and
2194 TOK_ERROR in the generated sources. In particular, the scanner must
2195 use these prefixed token names, although the grammar itself still
2196 uses the short names (as in the sample rule given above).
2198 ** Variable api.value.type
2200 This new %define variable supersedes the #define macro YYSTYPE. The use
2201 of YYSTYPE is discouraged. In particular, #defining YYSTYPE *and* either
2202 using %union or %defining api.value.type results in undefined behavior.
2204 Either define api.value.type, or use "%union":
2211 %token <ival> INT "integer"
2212 %token <sval> STRING "string"
2213 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <ival>
2214 %destructor { free ($$); } <sval>
2217 yylval.ival = 42; return INT;
2218 yylval.sval = "42"; return STRING;
2220 The %define variable api.value.type supports both keyword and code values.
2222 The keyword value 'union' means that the user provides genuine types, not
2223 union member names such as "ival" and "sval" above (WARNING: will fail if
2224 -y/--yacc/%yacc is enabled).
2226 %define api.value.type union
2227 %token <int> INT "integer"
2228 %token <char *> STRING "string"
2229 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <int>
2230 %destructor { free ($$); } <char *>
2233 yylval.INT = 42; return INT;
2234 yylval.STRING = "42"; return STRING;
2236 The keyword value variant is somewhat equivalent, but for C++ special
2237 provision is made to allow classes to be used (more about this below).
2239 %define api.value.type variant
2240 %token <int> INT "integer"
2241 %token <std::string> STRING "string"
2243 Code values (in braces) denote user defined types. This is where YYSTYPE
2261 %define api.value.type {struct my_value}
2262 %token <u.ival> INT "integer"
2263 %token <u.sval> STRING "string"
2264 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "%d", $$); } <u.ival>
2265 %destructor { free ($$); } <u.sval>
2268 yylval.u.ival = 42; return INT;
2269 yylval.u.sval = "42"; return STRING;
2271 ** Variable parse.error
2273 This variable controls the verbosity of error messages. The use of the
2274 %error-verbose directive is deprecated in favor of "%define parse.error
2277 ** Deprecated %define variable names
2279 The following variables have been renamed for consistency. Backward
2280 compatibility is ensured, but upgrading is recommended.
2282 lr.default-reductions -> lr.default-reduction
2283 lr.keep-unreachable-states -> lr.keep-unreachable-state
2284 namespace -> api.namespace
2285 stype -> api.value.type
2287 ** Semantic predicates
2289 Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
2291 The new, experimental, semantic-predicate feature allows actions of the
2292 form "%?{ BOOLEAN-EXPRESSION }", which cause syntax errors (as for
2293 YYERROR) if the expression evaluates to 0, and are evaluated immediately
2294 in GLR parsers, rather than being deferred. The result is that they allow
2295 the programmer to prune possible parses based on the values of run-time
2298 ** The directive %expect-rr is now an error in non GLR mode
2300 It used to be an error only if used in non GLR mode, _and_ if there are
2301 reduce/reduce conflicts.
2303 ** Tokens are numbered in their order of appearance
2305 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
2307 With '%token A B', A had a number less than the one of B. However,
2308 precedence declarations used to generate a reversed order. This is now
2309 fixed, and introducing tokens with any of %token, %left, %right,
2310 %precedence, or %nonassoc yields the same result.
2312 When mixing declarations of tokens with a literal character (e.g., 'a') or
2313 with an identifier (e.g., B) in a precedence declaration, Bison numbered
2314 the literal characters first. For example
2318 would lead to the tokens declared in this order: 'c' 'd' A B. Again, the
2319 input order is now preserved.
2321 These changes were made so that one can remove useless precedence and
2322 associativity declarations (i.e., map %nonassoc, %left or %right to
2323 %precedence, or to %token) and get exactly the same output.
2325 ** Useless precedence and associativity
2327 Contributed by Valentin Tolmer.
2329 When developing and maintaining a grammar, useless associativity and
2330 precedence directives are common. They can be a nuisance: new ambiguities
2331 arising are sometimes masked because their conflicts are resolved due to
2332 the extra precedence or associativity information. Furthermore, it can
2333 hinder the comprehension of a new grammar: one will wonder about the role
2334 of a precedence, where in fact it is useless. The following changes aim
2335 at detecting and reporting these extra directives.
2337 *** Precedence warning category
2339 A new category of warning, -Wprecedence, was introduced. It flags the
2340 useless precedence and associativity directives.
2342 *** Useless associativity
2344 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared associativity that is never
2345 used to resolve conflicts. In that case, using %precedence is sufficient;
2346 the parsing tables will remain unchanged. Solving these warnings may raise
2347 useless precedence warnings, as the symbols no longer have associativity.
2361 warning: useless associativity for '+', use %precedence [-Wprecedence]
2365 *** Useless precedence
2367 Bison now warns about symbols with a declared precedence and no declared
2368 associativity (i.e., declared with %precedence), and whose precedence is
2369 never used. In that case, the symbol can be safely declared with %token
2370 instead, without modifying the parsing tables. For example:
2374 exp: "var" '=' "number";
2378 warning: useless precedence for '=' [-Wprecedence]
2382 *** Useless precedence and associativity
2384 In case of both useless precedence and associativity, the issue is flagged
2389 exp: "var" '=' "number";
2393 warning: useless precedence and associativity for '=' [-Wprecedence]
2399 With help from Joel E. Denny and Gabriel Rassoul.
2401 Empty rules (i.e., with an empty right-hand side) can now be explicitly
2402 marked by the new %empty directive. Using %empty on a non-empty rule is
2403 an error. The new -Wempty-rule warning reports empty rules without
2404 %empty. On the following grammar:
2414 3.4-5: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
2417 5.8-13: error: %empty on non-empty rule
2421 ** Java skeleton improvements
2423 The constants for token names were moved to the Lexer interface. Also, it
2424 is possible to add code to the parser's constructors using "%code init"
2425 and "%define init_throws".
2426 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
2428 The Java skeleton now supports push parsing.
2429 Contributed by Dennis Heimbigner.
2431 ** C++ skeletons improvements
2433 *** The parser header is no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
2435 Using %defines is now optional. Without it, the needed support classes
2436 are defined in the generated parser, instead of additional files (such as
2437 location.hh, position.hh and stack.hh).
2439 *** Locations are no longer mandatory (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
2441 Both lalr1.cc and glr.cc no longer require %location.
2443 *** syntax_error exception (lalr1.cc)
2445 The C++ parser features a syntax_error exception, which can be
2446 thrown from the scanner or from user rules to raise syntax errors.
2447 This facilitates reporting errors caught in sub-functions (e.g.,
2448 rejecting too large integral literals from a conversion function
2449 used by the scanner, or rejecting invalid combinations from a
2450 factory invoked by the user actions).
2452 *** %define api.value.type variant
2454 This is based on a submission from Michiel De Wilde. With help
2455 from Théophile Ranquet.
2457 In this mode, complex C++ objects can be used as semantic values. For
2460 %token <::std::string> TEXT;
2461 %token <int> NUMBER;
2462 %token SEMICOLON ";"
2463 %type <::std::string> item;
2464 %type <::std::list<std::string>> list;
2467 list { std::cout << $1 << std::endl; }
2471 %empty { /* Generates an empty string list. */ }
2472 | list item ";" { std::swap ($$, $1); $$.push_back ($2); }
2476 TEXT { std::swap ($$, $1); }
2477 | NUMBER { $$ = string_cast ($1); }
2480 *** %define api.token.constructor
2482 When variants are enabled, Bison can generate functions to build the
2483 tokens. This guarantees that the token type (e.g., NUMBER) is consistent
2484 with the semantic value (e.g., int):
2486 parser::symbol_type yylex ()
2488 parser::location_type loc = ...;
2490 return parser::make_TEXT ("Hello, world!", loc);
2492 return parser::make_NUMBER (42, loc);
2494 return parser::make_SEMICOLON (loc);
2500 There are operator- and operator-= for 'location'. Negative line/column
2501 increments can no longer underflow the resulting value.
2504 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7.1 (2013-04-15) [stable]
2508 *** Fix compiler attribute portability (yacc.c)
2510 With locations enabled, __attribute__ was used unprotected.
2512 *** Fix some compiler warnings (lalr1.cc)
2515 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.7 (2012-12-12) [stable]
2519 Warnings about uninitialized yylloc in yyparse have been fixed.
2521 Restored C90 compliance (yet no report was ever made).
2523 ** Diagnostics are improved
2525 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
2527 *** Changes in the format of error messages
2529 This used to be the format of many error reports:
2531 input.y:2.7-12: %type redeclaration for exp
2532 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
2536 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
2537 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
2539 *** New format for error reports: carets
2541 Caret errors have been added to Bison:
2543 input.y:2.7-12: error: %type redeclaration for exp
2546 input.y:1.7-12: previous declaration
2552 input.y:3.20-23: error: ambiguous reference: '$exp'
2553 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
2555 input.y:3.1-3: refers to: $exp at $$
2556 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
2558 input.y:3.6-8: refers to: $exp at $1
2559 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
2561 input.y:3.14-16: refers to: $exp at $3
2562 exp: exp '+' exp { $exp = $1 + $3; };
2565 The default behavior for now is still not to display these unless
2566 explicitly asked with -fcaret (or -fall). However, in a later release, it
2567 will be made the default behavior (but may still be deactivated with
2570 ** New value for %define variable: api.pure full
2572 The %define variable api.pure requests a pure (reentrant) parser. However,
2573 for historical reasons, using it in a location-tracking Yacc parser
2574 resulted in a yyerror function that did not take a location as a
2575 parameter. With this new value, the user may request a better pure parser,
2576 where yyerror does take a location as a parameter (in location-tracking
2579 The use of "%define api.pure true" is deprecated in favor of this new
2580 "%define api.pure full".
2582 ** New %define variable: api.location.type (glr.cc, lalr1.cc, lalr1.java)
2584 The %define variable api.location.type defines the name of the type to use
2585 for locations. When defined, Bison no longer generates the position.hh
2586 and location.hh files, nor does the parser will include them: the user is
2587 then responsible to define her type.
2589 This can be used in programs with several parsers to factor their location
2590 and position files: let one of them generate them, and the others just use
2593 This feature was actually introduced, but not documented, in Bison 2.5,
2594 under the name "location_type" (which is maintained for backward
2597 For consistency, lalr1.java's %define variables location_type and
2598 position_type are deprecated in favor of api.location.type and
2601 ** Exception safety (lalr1.cc)
2603 The parse function now catches exceptions, uses the %destructors to
2604 release memory (the lookahead symbol and the symbols pushed on the stack)
2605 before re-throwing the exception.
2607 This feature is somewhat experimental. User feedback would be
2610 ** Graph improvements in DOT and XSLT
2612 Contributed by Théophile Ranquet.
2614 The graphical presentation of the states is more readable: their shape is
2615 now rectangular, the state number is clearly displayed, and the items are
2616 numbered and left-justified.
2618 The reductions are now explicitly represented as transitions to other
2619 diamond shaped nodes.
2621 These changes are present in both --graph output and xml2dot.xsl XSLT
2622 processing, with minor (documented) differences.
2624 ** %language is no longer an experimental feature.
2626 The introduction of this feature, in 2.4, was four years ago. The
2627 --language option and the %language directive are no longer experimental.
2631 The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts resolution
2632 have been fixed and extended.
2634 Although introduced more than four years ago, XML and Graphviz reports
2635 were not properly documented.
2637 The translation of midrule actions is now described.
2640 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.5 (2012-11-07) [stable]
2642 We consider compiler warnings about Bison generated parsers to be bugs.
2643 Rather than working around them in your own project, please consider
2644 reporting them to us.
2648 Warnings about uninitialized yylval and/or yylloc for push parsers with a
2649 pure interface have been fixed for GCC 4.0 up to 4.8, and Clang 2.9 to
2652 Other issues in the test suite have been addressed.
2654 Null characters are correctly displayed in error messages.
2656 When possible, yylloc is correctly initialized before calling yylex. It
2657 is no longer necessary to initialize it in the %initial-action.
2660 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.4 (2012-10-23) [stable]
2662 Bison 2.6.3's --version was incorrect. This release fixes this issue.
2665 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.3 (2012-10-22) [stable]
2669 Bugs and portability issues in the test suite have been fixed.
2671 Some errors in translations have been addressed, and --help now directs
2672 users to the appropriate place to report them.
2674 Stray Info files shipped by accident are removed.
2676 Incorrect definitions of YY_, issued by yacc.c when no parser header is
2677 generated, are removed.
2679 All the generated headers are self-contained.
2681 ** Header guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
2683 In order to avoid collisions, the header guards are now
2684 YY_<PREFIX>_<FILE>_INCLUDED, instead of merely <PREFIX>_<FILE>.
2685 For instance the header generated from
2687 %define api.prefix "calc"
2688 %defines "lib/parse.h"
2690 will use YY_CALC_LIB_PARSE_H_INCLUDED as guard.
2692 ** Fix compiler warnings in the generated parser (yacc.c, glr.c)
2694 The compilation of pure parsers (%define api.pure) can trigger GCC
2697 input.c: In function 'yyparse':
2698 input.c:1503:12: warning: 'yylval' may be used uninitialized in this
2699 function [-Wmaybe-uninitialized]
2703 This is now fixed; pragmas to avoid these warnings are no longer needed.
2705 Warnings from clang ("equality comparison with extraneous parentheses" and
2706 "function declared 'noreturn' should not return") have also been
2710 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.2 (2012-08-03) [stable]
2714 Buffer overruns, complaints from Flex, and portability issues in the test
2715 suite have been fixed.
2717 ** Spaces in %lex- and %parse-param (lalr1.cc, glr.cc)
2719 Trailing end-of-lines in %parse-param or %lex-param would result in
2720 invalid C++. This is fixed.
2722 ** Spurious spaces and end-of-lines
2724 The generated files no longer end (nor start) with empty lines.
2727 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6.1 (2012-07-30) [stable]
2729 Bison no longer executes user-specified M4 code when processing a grammar.
2733 In addition to the removal of the features announced in Bison 2.6, the
2734 next major release will remove the "Temporary hack for adding a semicolon
2735 to the user action", as announced in the release 2.5. Instead of:
2737 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
2741 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
2745 *** Type names are now properly escaped.
2747 *** glr.cc: set_debug_level and debug_level work as expected.
2749 *** Stray @ or $ in actions
2751 While Bison used to warn about stray $ or @ in action rules, it did not
2752 for other actions such as printers, destructors, or initial actions. It
2755 ** Type names in actions
2757 For consistency with rule actions, it is now possible to qualify $$ by a
2758 type-name in destructors, printers, and initial actions. For instance:
2760 %printer { fprintf (yyo, "(%d, %f)", $<ival>$, $<fval>$); } <*> <>;
2762 will display two values for each typed and untyped symbol (provided
2763 that YYSTYPE has both "ival" and "fval" fields).
2766 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.6 (2012-07-19) [stable]
2770 The next major release of Bison will drop support for the following
2771 deprecated features. Please report disagreements to bug-bison@gnu.org.
2775 Support for generating parsers in K&R C will be removed. Parsers
2776 generated for C support ISO C90, and are tested with ISO C99 and ISO C11
2779 *** Features deprecated since Bison 1.875
2781 The definitions of yystype and yyltype will be removed; use YYSTYPE and
2784 YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM, deprecated in favor of %parse-param and
2785 %lex-param, will no longer be supported.
2787 Support for the preprocessor symbol YYERROR_VERBOSE will be removed, use
2790 *** The generated header will be included (yacc.c)
2792 Instead of duplicating the content of the generated header (definition of
2793 YYSTYPE, yyparse declaration etc.), the generated parser will include it,
2794 as is already the case for GLR or C++ parsers. This change is deferred
2795 because existing versions of ylwrap (e.g., Automake 1.12.1) do not support
2798 ** Generated Parser Headers
2800 *** Guards (yacc.c, glr.c, glr.cc)
2802 The generated headers are now guarded, as is already the case for C++
2803 parsers (lalr1.cc). For instance, with --defines=foo.h:
2808 #endif /* !YY_FOO_H */
2810 *** New declarations (yacc.c, glr.c)
2812 The generated header now declares yydebug and yyparse. Both honor
2813 --name-prefix=bar_, and yield
2815 int bar_parse (void);
2819 #define yyparse bar_parse
2822 in order to facilitate the inclusion of several parser headers inside a
2823 single compilation unit.
2825 *** Exported symbols in C++
2827 The symbols YYTOKEN_TABLE and YYERROR_VERBOSE, which were defined in the
2828 header, are removed, as they prevent the possibility of including several
2829 generated headers from a single compilation unit.
2833 For the same reasons, the undocumented and unused macro YYLSP_NEEDED is no
2836 ** New %define variable: api.prefix
2838 Now that the generated headers are more complete and properly protected
2839 against multiple inclusions, constant names, such as YYSTYPE are a
2840 problem. While yyparse and others are properly renamed by %name-prefix,
2841 YYSTYPE, YYDEBUG and others have never been affected by it. Because it
2842 would introduce backward compatibility issues in projects not expecting
2843 YYSTYPE to be renamed, instead of changing the behavior of %name-prefix,
2844 it is deprecated in favor of a new %define variable: api.prefix.
2846 The following examples compares both:
2848 %name-prefix "bar_" | %define api.prefix "bar_"
2849 %token <ival> FOO %token <ival> FOO
2850 %union { int ival; } %union { int ival; }
2856 #ifndef BAR_FOO_H #ifndef BAR_FOO_H
2857 # define BAR_FOO_H # define BAR_FOO_H
2859 /* Enabling traces. */ /* Enabling traces. */
2860 # ifndef YYDEBUG | # ifndef BAR_DEBUG
2861 > # if defined YYDEBUG
2863 > # define BAR_DEBUG 1
2865 > # define BAR_DEBUG 0
2868 # define YYDEBUG 0 | # define BAR_DEBUG 0
2872 # if YYDEBUG | # if BAR_DEBUG
2873 extern int bar_debug; extern int bar_debug;
2876 /* Tokens. */ /* Tokens. */
2877 # ifndef YYTOKENTYPE | # ifndef BAR_TOKENTYPE
2878 # define YYTOKENTYPE | # define BAR_TOKENTYPE
2879 enum yytokentype { | enum bar_tokentype {
2884 #if ! defined YYSTYPE \ | #if ! defined BAR_STYPE \
2885 && ! defined YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED | && ! defined BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED
2886 typedef union YYSTYPE | typedef union BAR_STYPE
2889 } YYSTYPE; | } BAR_STYPE;
2890 # define YYSTYPE_IS_DECLARED 1 | # define BAR_STYPE_IS_DECLARED 1
2893 extern YYSTYPE bar_lval; | extern BAR_STYPE bar_lval;
2895 int bar_parse (void); int bar_parse (void);
2897 #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */ #endif /* !BAR_FOO_H */
2900 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5.1 (2012-06-05) [stable]
2904 The next major release will drop support for generating parsers in K&R C.
2906 ** yacc.c: YYBACKUP works as expected.
2908 ** glr.c improvements:
2910 *** Location support is eliminated when not requested:
2912 GLR parsers used to include location-related code even when locations were
2913 not requested, and therefore not even usable.
2915 *** __attribute__ is preserved:
2917 __attribute__ is no longer disabled when __STRICT_ANSI__ is defined (i.e.,
2918 when -std is passed to GCC).
2920 ** lalr1.java: several fixes:
2922 The Java parser no longer throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if the
2923 first token leads to a syntax error. Some minor clean ups.
2927 *** C++11 compatibility:
2929 C and C++ parsers use "nullptr" instead of "0" when __cplusplus is 201103L
2934 The header files such as "parser.hh", "location.hh", etc. used a constant
2935 name for preprocessor guards, for instance:
2937 #ifndef BISON_LOCATION_HH
2938 # define BISON_LOCATION_HH
2940 #endif // !BISON_LOCATION_HH
2942 The inclusion guard is now computed from "PREFIX/FILE-NAME", where lower
2943 case characters are converted to upper case, and series of
2944 non-alphanumerical characters are converted to an underscore.
2946 With "bison -o lang++/parser.cc", "location.hh" would now include:
2948 #ifndef YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
2949 # define YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
2951 #endif // !YY_LANG_LOCATION_HH
2955 The position and location constructors (and their initialize methods)
2956 accept new arguments for line and column. Several issues in the
2957 documentation were fixed.
2959 ** liby is no longer asking for "rpl_fprintf" on some platforms.
2961 ** Changes in the manual:
2963 *** %printer is documented
2965 The "%printer" directive, supported since at least Bison 1.50, is finally
2966 documented. The "mfcalc" example is extended to demonstrate it.
2968 For consistency with the C skeletons, the C++ parsers now also support
2969 "yyoutput" (as an alias to "debug_stream ()").
2971 *** Several improvements have been made:
2973 The layout for grammar excerpts was changed to a more compact scheme.
2974 Named references are motivated. The description of the automaton
2975 description file (*.output) is updated to the current format. Incorrect
2976 index entries were fixed. Some other errors were fixed.
2980 *** Conflicting prototypes with recent/modified Flex.
2982 Fixed build problems with the current, unreleased, version of Flex, and
2983 some modified versions of 2.5.35, which have modified function prototypes.
2985 *** Warnings during the build procedure have been eliminated.
2987 *** Several portability problems in the test suite have been fixed:
2989 This includes warnings with some compilers, unexpected behavior of tools
2990 such as diff, warning messages from the test suite itself, etc.
2992 *** The install-pdf target works properly:
2994 Running "make install-pdf" (or -dvi, -html, -info, and -ps) no longer
2995 halts in the middle of its course.
2998 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.5 (2011-05-14)
3000 ** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
3002 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
3003 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
3004 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
3005 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
3006 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
3008 ** Named references:
3010 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
3011 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
3014 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
3015 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
3016 as named references:
3018 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
3019 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
3021 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
3023 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
3024 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
3026 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
3027 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
3028 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
3030 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
3031 will help to stabilize them.
3032 Contributed by Alex Rozenman.
3034 ** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
3036 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
3037 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
3038 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
3039 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
3040 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
3041 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
3042 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
3043 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
3044 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
3046 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
3047 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
3048 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
3049 file with these directives:
3051 %define lr.type lalr
3052 %define lr.type ielr
3053 %define lr.type canonical-lr
3055 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
3056 adjusted using "%define lr.default-reductions". For details on both
3057 of these features, see the new section "Tuning LR" in the Bison
3060 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
3063 ** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling
3065 Contributed by Joel E. Denny.
3067 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
3068 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
3069 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
3070 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
3071 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
3072 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
3073 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
3074 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
3075 obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE"), the expected token list in the
3076 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
3079 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
3080 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
3081 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
3082 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
3083 inconsistent states.
3085 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
3086 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
3087 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
3088 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
3089 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
3090 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
3091 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
3092 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
3095 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
3096 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
3098 %define parse.lac full
3100 See the new section "LAC" in the Bison manual for additional
3101 details including a few caveats.
3103 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
3106 ** %define improvements:
3108 *** Can now be invoked via the command line:
3110 Each of these command-line options
3113 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
3116 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
3118 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
3120 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
3122 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
3123 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
3124 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
3125 details, see the section "Bison Options" in the Bison manual.
3127 *** Variables renamed:
3129 The following %define variables
3132 lr.keep_unreachable_states
3134 have been renamed to
3137 lr.keep-unreachable-states
3139 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
3140 for backward compatibility.
3142 *** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
3144 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
3145 within quotations marks. For example,
3147 %define api.push-pull "push"
3151 %define api.push-pull push
3153 *** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
3155 *** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
3157 ** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
3159 ** Character literals not of length one:
3161 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
3162 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
3163 the following grammar to be the same token:
3169 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
3170 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
3172 ** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
3174 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
3175 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
3176 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
3177 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
3179 ** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
3181 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
3182 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
3183 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has "first"
3184 and "last" members, instead of
3186 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
3190 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
3191 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
3195 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
3201 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
3205 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
3206 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
3210 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
3214 ** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
3216 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
3217 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
3218 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
3219 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
3221 ** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
3223 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
3224 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
3225 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
3226 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
3227 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
3228 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
3229 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
3230 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
3232 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
3234 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
3235 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
3236 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
3237 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
3239 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
3243 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
3245 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
3246 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
3247 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
3248 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
3249 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
3250 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
3251 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
3253 ** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
3255 When %error-verbose or the obsolete "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
3256 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
3257 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
3258 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
3259 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
3261 *** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
3262 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
3263 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
3264 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
3265 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
3266 reports the simpler message, "syntax error". Previously, this
3267 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
3268 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
3269 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
3270 shifted or discarded.
3272 *** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
3273 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
3274 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
3275 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
3277 *** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
3278 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
3279 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
3280 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
3281 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
3282 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
3283 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
3284 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
3285 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
3286 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
3287 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
3288 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
3291 ** Java skeleton fixes:
3293 *** A location handling bug has been fixed.
3295 *** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
3296 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
3298 *** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
3300 ** -W/--warnings fixes:
3302 *** Bison now properly recognizes the "no-" versions of categories:
3304 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
3305 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
3307 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
3309 *** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
3311 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
3312 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
3313 "conflicts-sr" and "conflicts-rr". This change has important
3314 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
3317 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
3318 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
3319 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
3320 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
3322 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
3323 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
3324 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
3325 then have no effect on the conflict report.
3327 *** The "none" category no longer disables a preceding "error":
3329 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
3330 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
3332 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
3334 *** The "none" category now disables all Bison warnings:
3336 Previously, the "none" category disabled only Bison warnings for
3337 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
3338 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
3339 suppress all warnings:
3343 ** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
3345 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
3346 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
3347 produced an assertion failure. For example:
3351 This bug has been fixed.
3354 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.4.3 (2010-08-05)
3356 ** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
3357 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
3359 ** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
3362 ** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
3364 ** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
3367 ** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
3368 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
3369 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
3370 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
3372 ** Minor documentation fixes.
3375 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.4.2 (2010-03-20)
3377 ** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
3378 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
3379 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
3380 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
3383 ** "%prec IDENTIFIER" requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
3385 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
3386 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
3387 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
3388 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
3389 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
3390 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
3391 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
3392 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
3393 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
3395 ** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
3397 ** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
3398 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
3401 ** %code is now a permanent feature.
3403 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
3407 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
3408 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
3411 %code requires {CODE}
3412 %code provides {CODE}
3415 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
3416 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
3417 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
3418 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
3419 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
3421 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
3422 is still considered experimental.
3424 ** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
3426 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
3427 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
3428 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
3429 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
3430 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
3433 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
3434 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
3435 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
3436 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
3437 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
3438 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE" is
3439 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
3441 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
3443 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
3444 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
3445 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
3446 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
3447 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
3448 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
3449 %error-verbose and "#define YYERROR_VERBOSE". Eventually, YYFAIL will
3450 be removed altogether.
3452 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
3453 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
3454 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
3455 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
3456 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
3457 epilogue (that is, after the second "%%") in the Bison input file. In
3458 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
3459 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
3460 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
3461 2.4.2 is not necessary.
3463 ** Internationalization.
3465 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
3466 message translations were not installed although supported by the
3470 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.4.1 (2008-12-11)
3472 ** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
3473 declarations have been fixed.
3475 ** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
3477 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
3478 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
3480 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
3484 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
3486 Some grammars still depend on this "feature". Bison 2.4.1 restores
3487 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
3488 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
3489 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
3490 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
3493 ** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
3496 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.4 (2008-11-02)
3498 ** %language is an experimental feature.
3500 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
3501 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
3502 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
3503 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
3506 ** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
3508 ** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
3512 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.3b (2008-05-27)
3514 ** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
3517 %define NAME "VALUE"
3519 ** The directive "%pure-parser" is now deprecated in favor of:
3523 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
3524 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
3528 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
3529 is, instead of invoking "yyparse", which pulls tokens from "yylex", you can
3530 push one token at a time to the parser using "yypush_parse", which will
3531 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
3532 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
3534 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
3535 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
3537 See the new section "A Push Parser" in the Bison manual for details.
3539 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
3540 feedback will help to stabilize it.
3542 ** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
3543 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
3544 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
3548 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
3549 "data/lalr1.java". Consider using the new %language directive instead of
3550 %skeleton to select it.
3552 See the new section "Java Parsers" in the Bison manual for details.
3554 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
3555 feedback will help to stabilize it.
3556 Contributed by Paolo Bonzini.
3560 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
3561 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
3562 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
3563 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
3565 ** XML Automaton Report
3567 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
3568 "--xml" option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
3569 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
3570 Contributed by Wojciech Polak.
3572 ** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
3573 %defines. For example:
3577 ** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
3578 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
3579 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
3580 instead of "unused".
3582 ** Unreachable State Removal
3584 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
3585 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
3586 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
3588 1. Removes unreachable states.
3590 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
3591 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
3592 directives in existing grammar files.
3594 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
3595 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
3597 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
3599 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
3601 See the %define entry in the "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison manual
3602 for further discussion.
3604 ** Lookahead Set Correction in the ".output" Report
3606 When instructed to generate a ".output" file including lookahead sets
3607 (using "--report=lookahead", for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
3608 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
3609 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
3610 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
3611 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
3612 bug affected only the ".output" file and not the generated parser source
3615 ** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default ".output" file
3618 ** The "=" that used to be required in the following directives is now
3621 %file-prefix "parser"
3625 ** An Alternative to "%{...%}" -- "%code QUALIFIER {CODE}"
3627 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
3628 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
3629 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
3630 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
3633 1. "%code {CODE}" replaces "%after-header {CODE}"
3634 2. "%code requires {CODE}" replaces "%start-header {CODE}"
3635 3. "%code provides {CODE}" replaces "%end-header {CODE}"
3636 4. "%code top {CODE}" replaces "%before-header {CODE}"
3638 See the %code entries in section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
3639 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section "Prologue
3640 Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
3641 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
3643 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
3644 determine whether they should become permanent features.
3646 ** Revised warning: unset or unused midrule values
3648 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about midrule values that are set but not
3649 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
3652 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
3654 Now, Bison also warns about midrule values that are used but not set. For
3655 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the midrule action in:
3657 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
3659 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
3660 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
3661 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
3663 To enable these warnings, specify the option "--warnings=midrule-values" or
3664 "-W", which is a synonym for "--warnings=all".
3666 ** Default %destructor or %printer with "<*>" or "<>"
3668 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
3671 1. Place "<*>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
3672 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
3673 declared semantic type tags.
3675 2. Place "<>" in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
3676 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
3679 Bison no longer supports the "%symbol-default" notation from Bison 2.3a.
3680 "<*>" and "<>" combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
3681 longer applies any %destructor to a midrule value if that midrule value is
3682 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
3684 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
3685 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
3688 See the section "Freeing Discarded Symbols" in the Bison manual for further
3691 ** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
3692 by POSIX. However, see the end of section "Operator Precedence" in the Bison
3693 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
3695 ** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
3696 completely removed from Bison.
3699 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.3a (2006-09-13)
3701 ** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
3702 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
3703 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
3704 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
3705 and is required by POSIX.
3707 ** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
3708 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
3710 ** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
3714 %union { char *string; }
3715 %token <string> STRING1
3716 %token <string> STRING2
3717 %type <string> string1
3718 %type <string> string2
3719 %union { char character; }
3720 %token <character> CHR
3721 %type <character> chr
3722 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
3723 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
3724 %destructor { } <character>
3726 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
3727 semantic type tag other than "<character>", it passes its semantic value to
3728 "free". However, when the parser discards a "STRING1" or a "string1", it
3729 also prints its line number to "stdout". It performs only the second
3730 "%destructor" in this case, so it invokes "free" only once.
3732 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
3733 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
3736 ** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with "-y",
3737 "--yacc", or "%yacc"), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
3738 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
3739 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
3740 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
3742 ** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
3743 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
3745 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
3746 "%{ ... %}" syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
3747 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
3748 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
3749 declared after the first %union.
3751 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
3752 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
3753 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
3754 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
3755 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
3756 after the token definitions.
3758 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
3759 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
3761 ** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
3762 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
3765 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
3766 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
3767 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
3771 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
3772 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
3773 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
3774 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
3775 * example is '#include "system.h"'. */
3778 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
3779 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
3780 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
3781 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
3784 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
3785 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
3786 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
3789 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
3790 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
3791 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
3792 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
3796 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
3797 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
3798 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
3799 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
3800 * Bison-generated definitions. */
3803 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
3804 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
3806 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
3807 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
3809 ** The option "--report=look-ahead" has been changed to "--report=lookahead".
3810 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
3811 in a future release.
3814 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.3 (2006-06-05)
3816 ** GLR grammars should now use "YYRECOVERING ()" instead of "YYRECOVERING",
3817 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
3819 ** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
3820 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
3823 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.2 (2006-05-19)
3825 ** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
3826 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
3827 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
3829 ** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
3831 ** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
3833 ** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
3834 their contents together.
3836 ** New warning: unused values
3837 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
3838 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
3840 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
3844 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
3845 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
3846 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
3848 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
3849 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
3851 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
3854 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
3855 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
3856 values are used, e.g.:
3858 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
3859 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
3862 If there are midrule actions, the warning is issued if no action
3863 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
3865 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
3867 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
3868 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
3870 ** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
3871 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
3872 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
3873 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
3875 ** %expect, %expect-rr
3876 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
3877 instead of warnings.
3879 ** GLR, YACC parsers.
3880 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
3881 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
3883 ** Bison now warns if it finds a stray "$" or "@" in an action.
3885 ** %require "VERSION"
3886 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
3887 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
3889 ** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
3890 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
3891 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
3892 tokens are enumerations of the "yy::parser::token" struct, and the
3893 semantic values have the "yy::parser::semantic_type" type.
3895 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
3896 '%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
3897 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
3898 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
3900 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
3901 fail using '%require "2.2"'.
3903 ** DJGPP support added.
3906 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.1 (2005-09-16)
3908 ** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
3910 ** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
3911 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
3912 language is still English. For details, please see the new
3913 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
3914 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
3915 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
3917 ** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
3918 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
3919 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
3920 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
3922 ** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
3923 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
3924 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
3926 ** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
3927 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
3928 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
3929 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
3930 unexpected "number"'.
3933 * Noteworthy changes in release 2.0 (2004-12-25)
3935 ** Possibly-incompatible changes
3937 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
3938 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
3939 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
3940 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
3941 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
3943 - Error token location.
3944 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
3945 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
3946 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
3947 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
3949 - Semicolon changes:
3950 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
3951 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
3953 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
3954 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
3955 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
3956 forget a closing quote.
3958 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
3962 - GLR grammars now support locations.
3964 - New directive: %initial-action.
3965 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
3966 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
3968 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
3969 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
3971 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., "%token FOO 0x12d".
3972 This is a GNU extension.
3974 - The option "--report=lookahead" was changed to "--report=look-ahead".
3975 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
3977 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
3979 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
3980 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
3984 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
3985 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
3986 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
3987 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
3988 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
3989 these violations will become errors again.
3991 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
3992 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
3994 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
3997 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.875 (2003-01-01)
3999 ** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
4000 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
4002 ** syntax error processing
4004 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
4005 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
4008 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
4009 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
4012 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
4014 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
4015 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
4017 ** POSIX conformance
4019 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
4020 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
4021 compatibility with Yacc.
4023 - "parse error" -> "syntax error"
4024 Bison now uniformly uses the term "syntax error"; formerly, the code
4025 and manual sometimes used the term "parse error" instead. POSIX
4026 requires "syntax error" in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
4029 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
4030 declared before use. C99 requires this.
4032 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
4033 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
4035 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
4036 output as "foo\\bar.y".
4038 - Yacc command and library now available
4039 The Bison distribution now installs a "yacc" command, as POSIX requires.
4040 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
4041 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
4042 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
4044 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
4046 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
4047 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
4048 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
4050 ** Other compatibility issues
4052 - %union directives can now have a tag before the "{", e.g., the
4053 directive "%union foo {...}" now generates the C code
4054 "typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;"; this is for Yacc compatibility.
4055 The default union tag is "YYSTYPE", for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
4056 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now "YYLTYPE" not "yyltype".
4057 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
4059 - ";" is output before the terminating "}" of an action, for
4060 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
4062 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
4063 "conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce".
4065 - "yystype" and "yyltype" are now obsolescent macros instead of being
4066 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
4067 withdrawn in a future release.
4072 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
4075 - "parsing stack overflow..." -> "parser stack overflow"
4076 GLR parsers now report "parser stack overflow" as per the Bison manual.
4078 ** %parse-param and %lex-param
4079 The macros YYPARSE_PARAM and YYLEX_PARAM provide a means to pass
4080 additional context to yyparse and yylex. They suffer from several
4083 - a single argument only can be added,
4084 - their types are weak (void *),
4085 - this context is not passed to ancillary functions such as yyerror,
4086 - only yacc.c parsers support them.
4088 The new %parse-param/%lex-param directives provide a more precise control.
4091 %parse-param {int *nastiness}
4092 %lex-param {int *nastiness}
4093 %parse-param {int *randomness}
4095 results in the following signatures:
4097 int yylex (int *nastiness);
4098 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
4100 or, if both %pure-parser and %locations are used:
4102 int yylex (YYSTYPE *lvalp, YYLTYPE *llocp, int *nastiness);
4103 int yyparse (int *nastiness, int *randomness);
4105 ** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
4106 e.g., it generates a warning for "bison -d -o foo.h foo.y" since
4107 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
4109 ** #line in output files
4110 - --no-line works properly.
4112 ** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
4113 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
4114 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
4115 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
4118 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.75 (2002-10-14)
4120 ** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
4122 ** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
4125 Fix spurious parse errors.
4128 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
4129 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
4132 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
4133 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
4137 but the converse remains an error:
4141 ** Values of midrule actions
4144 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
4146 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second midrule
4147 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first midrule action.
4150 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.50 (2002-10-04)
4155 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
4156 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
4157 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
4158 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
4160 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
4161 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
4164 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
4165 specified, running "bison foo/bar.y" created "foo/bar.c". It
4166 now creates "bar.c".
4169 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
4170 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
4172 ** Unknown token numbers
4173 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
4177 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
4178 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
4179 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
4180 will be mapped onto another number.
4182 ** Verbose error messages
4183 They no longer report "..., expecting error or..." for states where
4184 error recovery is possible.
4187 Defaults to "$end" instead of "$".
4189 ** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
4190 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
4191 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
4192 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
4193 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
4194 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
4195 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
4196 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
4197 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
4200 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
4203 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
4204 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
4205 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
4206 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
4208 ** Explicit initial rule
4209 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
4210 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
4214 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
4215 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
4217 ** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
4218 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
4220 ** Rules never reduced
4221 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
4224 ** Incorrect "Token not used"
4225 On a grammar such as
4227 %token useless useful
4229 exp: '0' %prec useful;
4231 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
4232 bison reported both "useful" and "useless" as useless tokens.
4234 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
4235 as they caused too many portability hassles.
4237 ** Default locations
4238 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
4239 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
4240 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
4241 the computation of @$.
4243 ** Token end-of-file
4244 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
4245 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
4246 error messages instead of "$end", which remains being the default.
4250 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
4253 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
4256 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
4257 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
4259 ** Incorrect token definitions
4262 bison used to output
4265 ** Token definitions as enums
4266 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
4267 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
4268 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
4271 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
4272 produces additional information:
4274 complete the core item sets with their closure
4275 - lookahead [changed to "look-ahead" in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
4276 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
4278 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
4279 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
4280 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
4283 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
4284 the default action if the rule has a midrule action, such as in:
4292 ** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
4295 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.35 (2002-03-25)
4298 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
4299 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
4300 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
4302 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
4303 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
4304 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
4305 kludge will be disabled.
4307 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
4311 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.34 (2002-03-12)
4313 ** File name clashes are detected
4314 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
4315 fatal error: header and parser would both be named "foo.x"
4317 ** A missing ";" at the end of a rule triggers a warning
4318 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
4319 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
4320 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
4321 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
4322 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
4324 ** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
4325 many portability hassles.
4327 ** DJGPP support added.
4329 ** Fix test suite portability problems.
4332 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.33 (2002-02-07)
4335 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
4336 under some conditions.
4342 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.32 (2002-01-23)
4344 ** Fix Yacc output file names
4346 ** Portability fixes
4348 ** Italian, Dutch translations
4351 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.31 (2002-01-14)
4355 ** GNU Gettext and %expect
4356 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
4357 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
4358 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
4359 does not trigger an error when the input file is named "plural.y".
4361 ** Use of alloca in parsers
4362 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
4363 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
4365 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
4368 ** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
4370 ** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
4371 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
4374 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
4375 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
4376 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
4378 ** Better C++ compliance
4379 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
4380 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
4383 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
4386 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
4389 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
4392 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
4395 ** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
4397 ** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
4399 ** Swedish translation
4402 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
4403 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
4404 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
4406 ** Fixed parser memory leaks.
4407 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
4408 previous allocations were not freed.
4410 ** Fixed verbose output file.
4411 Some newlines were missing.
4412 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
4414 ** Fixed conflict report.
4415 Option -v was needed to get the result.
4419 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
4421 ** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
4423 ** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
4425 ** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
4427 ** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
4428 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
4430 ** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
4432 ** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
4436 New, aliasing "--output-file".
4439 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.30 (2001-10-26)
4441 ** "--defines" and "--graph" have now an optional argument which is the
4442 output file name. "-d" and "-g" do not change; they do not take any
4445 ** "%source_extension" and "%header_extension" are removed, failed
4448 ** Portability fixes.
4451 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.29 (2001-09-07)
4453 ** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
4454 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
4455 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
4456 "-Dconst=". Autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
4458 ** Added "-g" and "--graph".
4460 ** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
4462 ** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
4464 ** Russian translation added.
4466 ** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
4468 ** Added the old Bison reference card.
4470 ** Added "--locations" and "%locations".
4472 ** Added "-S" and "--skeleton".
4474 ** "%raw", "-r", "--raw" is disabled.
4476 ** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
4477 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
4480 "%yacc", "%fixed_output_files", "%defines", "%no_parser", "%verbose",
4481 "%debug", "%source_extension" and "%header_extension".
4484 Automatic location tracking.
4487 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.28 (1999-07-06)
4489 ** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
4493 ** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
4495 ** There is now a FAQ.
4498 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.27
4500 ** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
4501 some systems has been fixed.
4504 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.26
4506 ** Bison now uses Automake.
4508 ** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
4510 ** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
4512 ** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
4514 ** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
4516 ** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
4518 ** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
4519 not provide alloca().
4522 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.25 (1995-10-16)
4524 ** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
4525 the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
4527 ** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
4528 example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
4529 of choosing a name like LESSEQ.
4531 ** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
4532 and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
4533 table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
4536 ** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
4537 directives in the parser file.
4539 ** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
4540 Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
4542 ** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
4543 the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
4544 The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
4545 a switch statement body.
4548 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.23
4550 The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
4551 passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
4552 actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
4553 by casting it to the proper pointer type.
4555 Line numbers in output file corrected.
4558 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.22
4560 --help option added.
4563 * Noteworthy changes in release 1.20
4565 Output file does not redefine const for C++.
4569 LocalWords: yacc YYBACKUP glr GCC lalr ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException nullptr
4570 LocalWords: cplusplus liby rpl fprintf mfcalc Wyacc stmt cond expr mk sym lr
4571 LocalWords: IELR ielr Lookahead YYERROR nonassoc LALR's api lookaheads yychar
4572 LocalWords: destructor lookahead YYRHSLOC YYLLOC Rhs ifndef YYFAIL cpp sr rr
4573 LocalWords: preprocessor initializer Wno Wnone Werror FreeBSD prec livelocks
4574 LocalWords: Solaris AIX UX RHEL Tru LHS gcc's Wundef YYENABLE NLS YYLTYPE VCG
4575 LocalWords: yyerror cpp's Wunused yylval yylloc prepend yyparse yylex yypush
4576 LocalWords: Graphviz xml nonterminals midrule destructor's YYSTYPE typedef ly
4577 LocalWords: CHR chr printf stdout namespace preprocessing enum pre include's
4578 LocalWords: YYRECOVERING nonfree destructors YYABORT YYACCEPT params enums de
4579 LocalWords: struct yystype DJGPP lex param Haible NUM alloca YYSTACK NUL goto
4580 LocalWords: YYMAXDEPTH Unescaped UCNs YYLTYPE's yyltype typedefs inline Yaccs
4581 LocalWords: Heriyanto Reenable dprec Hilfinger Eggert MYEOF Folle Menezes EOF
4582 LocalWords: Lackovic define's itemset Groff Gettext malloc NEWS'ed YYDEBUG YY
4583 LocalWords: namespaces strerror const autoconfiguration Dconst Autoconf's FDL
4584 LocalWords: Automake TMPDIR LESSEQ ylwrap endif yydebug YYTOKEN YYLSP ival hh
4585 LocalWords: extern YYTOKENTYPE TOKENTYPE yytokentype tokentype STYPE lval pdf
4586 LocalWords: lang yyoutput dvi html ps POSIX lvalp llocp Wother nterm arg init
4587 LocalWords: TOK calc yyo fval Wconflicts parsers yystackp yyval yynerrs
4588 LocalWords: Théophile Ranquet Santet fno fnone stype associativity Tolmer
4589 LocalWords: Wprecedence Rassoul Wempty Paolo Bonzini parser's Michiel loc
4590 LocalWords: redeclaration sval fcaret reentrant XSLT xsl Wmaybe yyvsp Tedi
4591 LocalWords: pragmas noreturn untyped Rozenman unexpanded Wojciech Polak
4592 LocalWords: Alexandre MERCHANTABILITY yytype emplace ptr automove lvalues
4593 LocalWords: nonterminal yy args Pragma dereference yyformat rhs docdir bw
4594 LocalWords: Redeclarations rpcalc Autoconf YFLAGS Makefiles PROG DECL num
4595 LocalWords: Heimbigner AST src ast Makefile srcdir MinGW xxlex XXSTYPE
4596 LocalWords: XXLTYPE strictfp IDEs ffixit fdiagnostics parseable fixits
4597 LocalWords: Wdeprecated yytext Variadic variadic yyrhs yyphrs RCS README
4598 LocalWords: noexcept constexpr ispell american deprecations backend Teoh
4599 LocalWords: YYPRINT Mangold Bonzini's Wdangling exVal baz checkable gcc
4600 LocalWords: fsanitize Vogelsgesang lis redeclared stdint automata yytname
4601 LocalWords: yysymbol yytnamerr yyreport ctx ARGMAX yysyntax stderr LPAREN
4602 LocalWords: symrec yypcontext TOKENMAX yyexpected YYEMPTY yypstate YYEOF
4603 LocalWords: autocompletion bistromathic submessages Cayuela lexcalc hoc
4604 LocalWords: yytoken YYUNDEF YYerror basename Automake's UTF ifdef ffile
4605 LocalWords: gotos readline Imbimbo Wcounterexamples Wcex Nonunifying rcex
4608 ispell-dictionary: "american"
4613 Copyright (C) 1995-2015, 2018-2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4615 This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
4617 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
4618 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
4619 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
4620 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
4621 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the "GNU Free
4622 Documentation License" file as part of this distribution.