bison/TODO

-*- outline -*-

* URGENT: Documenting C++ output
Write a first documentation for C++ output.

* value_components_used
Was defined but not used: where was it coming from?  It can't be to
check if %union is used, since the user is free to $<foo>n on her
union, doesn't she?

* yyerror, yyprint interface
It should be improved, in particular when using Bison features such as
locations, and YYPARSE_PARAMS.  For the time being, it is recommended
to #define yyerror and yyprint to steal internal variables...

* documentation
Explain $axiom (and maybe change its name: BTYacc names it `goal',
byacc `$accept' probably based on AT&T Yacc, Meta `Start'...).
Complete the glossary (item, axiom, ?).

* Error messages
Some are really funky.  For instance

	type clash (`%s' `%s') on default action

is really weird.  Revisit them all.

* Report documentation
Extend with error.  The hard part will probably be finding the right
rule so that a single state does not exhibit to many yet undocumented
``features''.  Maybe an empty action ought to be presented too.  Shall
we try to make a single grammar with all these features, or should we
have several very small grammars?

* Documentation
Some history of Bison and some bibliography would be most welcome.
Are there any Texinfo standards for bibliography?

* Several %unions
I think this is a pleasant (but useless currently) feature, but in the
future, I want a means to %include other bits of grammars, and _then_
it will be important for the various bits to define their needs in
%union.

When implementing multiple-%union support, bare the following in mind:

- when --yacc, this must be flagged as an error.  Don't make it fatal
  though.

- The #line must now appear *inside* the definition of yystype.
  Something like

	{
	#line 12 "foo.y"
	  int ival;
	#line 23 "foo.y"
	  char *sval;
	}

* --report=conflict-path
Provide better assistance for understanding the conflicts by providing
a sample text exhibiting the (LALR) ambiguity.  See the paper from
DeRemer and Penello: they already provide the algorithm.

* Coding system independence
Paul notes:

	Currently Bison assumes 8-bit bytes (i.e. that UCHAR_MAX is
	255).  It also assumes that the 8-bit character encoding is
	the same for the invocation of 'bison' as it is for the
	invocation of 'cc', but this is not necessarily true when
	people run bison on an ASCII host and then use cc on an EBCDIC
	host.  I don't think these topics are worth our time
	addressing (unless we find a gung-ho volunteer for EBCDIC or
	PDP-10 ports :-) but they should probably be documented
	somewhere.

* Unit rules
Maybe we could expand unit rules, i.e., transform

	exp: arith | bool;
	arith: exp '+' exp;
	bool: exp '&' exp;

into

	exp: exp '+' exp | exp '&' exp;

when there are no actions.  This can significantly speed up some
grammars.  I can't find the papers.  In particular the book `LR
parsing: Theory and Practice' is impossible to find, but according to
`Parsing Techniques: a Practical Guide', it includes information about
this issue.  Does anybody have it?

* Stupid error messages
An example shows it easily:

src/bison/tests % ./testsuite -k calc,location,error-verbose -l
GNU Bison 1.49a test suite test groups:

 NUM: FILENAME:LINE      TEST-GROUP-NAME
      KEYWORDS

  51: calc.at:440        Calculator --locations --yyerror-verbose
  52: calc.at:442        Calculator --defines --locations --name-prefix=calc --verbose --yacc --yyerror-verbose
  54: calc.at:445        Calculator --debug --defines --locations --name-prefix=calc --verbose --yacc --yyerror-verbose
src/bison/tests % ./testsuite 51 -d
## --------------------------- ##
## GNU Bison 1.49a test suite. ##
## --------------------------- ##
 51: calc.at:440       ok
## ---------------------------- ##
## All 1 tests were successful. ##
## ---------------------------- ##
src/bison/tests % cd ./testsuite.dir/51
tests/testsuite.dir/51 % echo "()" | ./calc
1.2-1.3: parse error, unexpected ')', expecting error or "number" or '-' or '('

* read_pipe.c
This is not portable to DOS for instance.  Implement a more portable
scheme.  Sources of inspiration include GNU diff, and Free Recode.

* Memory leaks in the generator
A round of memory leak clean ups would be most welcome.  Dmalloc,
Checker GCC, Electric Fence, or Valgrind: you chose your tool.

* --graph
Show reductions.	[]

* Broken options ?
** %no-lines		[ok]
** %no-parser		[]
** %pure-parser		[]
** %token-table		[]
** Options which could use parse_dquoted_param ().
Maybe transfered in lex.c.
*** %skeleton		[ok]
*** %output		[]
*** %file-prefix	[]
*** %name-prefix	[]

** Skeleton strategy.	[]
Must we keep %no-parser?
	     %token-table?
*** New skeletons.	[]

* src/print_graph.c
Find the best graph parameters.	[]

* doc/bison.texinfo
** Update
informations about ERROR_VERBOSE.	[]
** Add explainations about
skeleton muscles.	[]
%skeleton.		[]

* testsuite
** tests/pure-parser.at	[]
New tests.

* input synclines
Some users create their foo.y files, and equip them with #line.  Bison
should recognize these, and preserve them.

* BTYacc
See if we can integrate backtracking in Bison.  Contact the BTYacc
maintainers.

* RR conflicts
See if we can use precedence between rules to solve RR conflicts.  See
what POSIX says.

* Precedence
It is unfortunate that there is a total order for precedence.  It
makes it impossible to have modular precedence information.  We should
move to partial orders.

This will be possible with a Bison parser for the grammar, as it will
make it much easier to extend the grammar.

* $undefined
From Hans:
- If the Bison generated parser experiences an undefined number in the
character range, that character is written out in diagnostic messages, an
addition to the $undefined value.

Suggest: Change the name $undefined to undefined; looks better in outputs.

* Default Action
From Hans:
- For use with my C++ parser, I transported the "switch (yyn)" statement
that Bison writes to the bison.simple skeleton file. This way, I can remove
the current default rule $$ = $1 implementation, which causes a double
assignment to $$ which may not be OK under C++, replacing it with a
"default:" part within the switch statement.

Note that the default rule $$ = $1, when typed, is perfectly OK under C,
but in the C++ implementation I made, this rule is different from
$<type_name>$ = $<type_name>1. I therefore think that one should implement
a Bison option where every typed default rule is explicitly written out
(same typed ruled can of course be grouped together).

Note: Robert Anisko handles this.  He knows how to do it.

* Warnings
It would be nice to have warning support.  See how Autoconf handles
them, it is fairly well described there.  It would be very nice to
implement this in such a way that other programs could use
lib/warnings.[ch].

Don't work on this without first announcing you do, as I already have
thought about it, and know many of the components that can be used to
implement it.

* Pre and post actions.
From: Florian Krohm <florian@edamail.fishkill.ibm.com>
Subject: YYACT_EPILOGUE
To: bug-bison@gnu.org
X-Sent: 1 week, 4 days, 14 hours, 38 minutes, 11 seconds ago

The other day I had the need for explicitly building the parse tree. I
used %locations for that and defined YYLLOC_DEFAULT to call a function
that returns the tree node for the production. Easy. But I also needed
to assign the S-attribute to the tree node. That cannot be done in
YYLLOC_DEFAULT, because it is invoked before the action is executed.
The way I solved this was to define a macro YYACT_EPILOGUE that would
be invoked after the action. For reasons of symmetry I also added
YYACT_PROLOGUE. Although I had no use for that I can envision how it
might come in handy for debugging purposes.
All is needed is to add

#if YYLSP_NEEDED
    YYACT_EPILOGUE (yyval, (yyvsp - yylen), yylen, yyloc, (yylsp - yylen));
#else
    YYACT_EPILOGUE (yyval, (yyvsp - yylen), yylen);
#endif

at the proper place to bison.simple. Ditto for YYACT_PROLOGUE.

I was wondering what you think about adding YYACT_PROLOGUE/EPILOGUE
to bison. If you're interested, I'll work on a patch.

* Move to Graphviz
Well, VCG seems really dead.  Move to Graphviz instead.  Also, equip
the parser with a means to create the (visual) parse tree.

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