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[Bison-Announce] Bison 3.4.90 released [beta]


From: Akim Demaille
Subject: [Bison-Announce] Bison 3.4.90 released [beta]
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2019 07:29:39 +0100

Dear Bison riders,

There is already quite a large number of patches since Bison 3.4:
265 so far (3.0: 1225, 3.1: 252, 3.2: 297, 3.3: 255, 3.4: 209).  Many
of them are "invisible" and mostly related to refactoring and
preparing forthcoming changes.  But some of them have a very visible
impact.

In particular the use of integral types has been revised in both the
generator and the generated parsers (thanks to Paul Eggert).  As a
consequence small parsers have a smaller footprint, and very large
automata are now possible with the default backend (yacc.c).

There is one breaking change that somewhat worries me: in C++
positions moved from unsigned (for line and column numbers) to int.
It might break some existing projects, and maybe not.  We *need* to
know!  If it does break your project, then we will design some
migration path.  Otherwise, let's keep things simple.

Please, torture this beta, and report your mileage!

Cheers!

==================================================================

Bison is a general-purpose parser generator that converts an annotated
context-free grammar into a deterministic LR or generalized LR (GLR) parser
employing LALR(1) parser tables.  Bison can also generate IELR(1) or
canonical LR(1) parser tables.  Once you are proficient with Bison, you can
use it to develop a wide range of language parsers, from those used in
simple desk calculators to complex programming languages.

Bison is upward compatible with Yacc: all properly-written Yacc grammars
work with Bison with no change.  Anyone familiar with Yacc should be able to
use Bison with little trouble.  You need to be fluent in C, C++ or Java
programming in order to use Bison.

Here is the GNU Bison home page:
   https://gnu.org/software/bison/

==================================================================

Here are the compressed sources:
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.4.90.tar.gz   (4.1MB)
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.4.90.tar.xz   (3.1MB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.4.90.tar.gz.sig
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.4.90.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify bison-3.4.90.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 0DDCAA3278D5264E

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.69
  Automake 1.16.1
  Flex 2.6.4
  Gettext 0.19.8.1
  Gnulib v0.1-2899-g56ca994d4

==================================================================

NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 3.4.90 (2019-10-29) [beta]

** Backward incompatible changes

  Lone carriage-return characters (aka \r or ^M) in the grammar files are no
  longer treated as end-of-lines.  This changes the diagnostics, and in
  particular their locations.

  In C++, line numbers and columns are now represented as 'int' not
  'unsigned', so that integer overflow on positions is easily checkable via
  'gcc -fsanitize=undefined' and the like.  This affects the API for
  positions.

** Bug fixes

  In Java, %define api.prefix was ignored.  It now behaves as expected.

** New features

*** Lookahead correction in C++

  Contributed by Adrian Vogelsgesang.

  The C++ deterministic skeleton (lalr1.cc) now supports LAC, via the
  %define variable parse.lac.

*** Variable api.token.raw: Optimized token numbers (all skeletons)

  In the generated parsers, tokens have two numbers: the "external" token
  number as returned by yylex (which starts at 257), and the "internal"
  symbol number (which starts at 3).  Each time yylex is called, a table
  lookup maps the external token number to the internal symbol number.

  When the %define variable api.token.raw is set, tokens are assigned their
  internal number, which saves one table lookup per token, and also saves
  the generation of the mapping table.

  The gain is typically moderate, but in extreme cases (very simple user
  actions), a 10% improvement can be observed.

*** Diagnostics with insertion

  The diagnostics now display suggestion below the underlined source.
  Replacement for undeclared symbols are now also suggested.

    $ cat /tmp/foo.y
    %%
    list: lis '.' |

    $ bison -Wall foo.y
    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'?
        2 | list: lis '.' |
          |       ^~~
          |       list
    foo.y:2.16: warning: empty rule without %empty [-Wempty-rule]
        2 | list: lis '.' |
          |                ^
          |                %empty
    foo.y: warning: fix-its can be applied.  Rerun with option '--update'. 
[-Wother]

*** Diagnostics about long lines

  Quoted sources may now be truncated to fit the screen.  For instance, on a
  30-column wide terminal:

    $ cat foo.y
    %token FOO                       FOO                         FOO
    %%
    exp: FOO
    $ bison foo.y
    foo.y:1.34-36: warning: symbol FOO redeclared [-Wother]
        1 | …         FOO                  …
          |           ^~~
    foo.y:1.8-10:      previous declaration
        1 | %token FOO                     …
          |        ^~~
    foo.y:1.62-64: warning: symbol FOO redeclared [-Wother]
        1 | …         FOO
          |           ^~~
    foo.y:1.8-10:      previous declaration
        1 | %token FOO                     …
          |        ^~~

*** Debug traces in Java

  The Java backend no longer emits code and data for parser tracing if the
  %define variable parse.trace is not defined.

*** Generated parsers prefer signed integer types

  Bison skeletons now prefer signed to unsigned integer types when either
  will do, as the signed types are less error-prone and allow for better
  checking with 'gcc -fsanitize=undefined'.  Also, the types chosen are now
  portable to unusual machines where char, short and int are all the same
  width.  On non-GNU platforms this may entail including <limits.h> and (if
  available) <stdint.h> to define integer types and constants.

*** Generated parsers use better types for states

  Stacks now use the best integral type for state numbers, instead of always
  using 15 bits.  As a result "small" parsers now have a smaller memory
  footprint (they use 8 bits), and there is support for large automata (16
  bits), and extra large (using int, i.e., typically 31 bits).





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