3ba001baac
There's a number of advantage in exposing the symbol (internal)
numbers:
- custom error messages can use them to decide how to represent a
given symbol, or a set of symbols.
- we need something similar in uses of yyexpected_tokens. For
instance, currently, bistromathic's completion() reads:
int ntokens = expected_tokens (line, tokens, YYNTOKENS);
[...]
for (int i = 0; i < ntokens; ++i)
if (tokens[i] == YYTRANSLATE (TOK_VAR))
[...]
else if (tokens[i] == YYTRANSLATE (TOK_FUN))
[...]
else
[...]
- now that it's a compile-time expression, we can easily build static
tables, switch, etc.
- some users depended on the ability to get the token number from a
symbol to write test cases for their scanners. But Bison 3.5
removed the table this feature depended upon (a reverse
yytranslate). Now they can check against the actual symbol number,
without having pay (space and time) a conversion.
See https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-bison/2020-01/msg00001.html, and
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2020-03/msg00015.html.
- it helps us clearly separate the internal symbol numbers from the
external token numbers, whose difference is sometimes blurred in the
code when values coincide (e.g. "yychar = yytoken = YYEOF").
- it allows us to get rid of ugly macros with inconsistent names such
as YYUNDEFTOK and YYTERROR, and to group related definitions
together.
- similarly it provides a clean access to the $accept symbol (which
proves convenient in a current experimentation of mine with several
%start symbols).
Let's declare this type as a private type (in the *.c file, not
the *.h one). So it does not need to be influenced by the api prefix.
* data/skeletons/bison.m4 (b4_symbol_sid): New.
(b4_symbol): Use it.
* data/skeletons/c.m4 (b4_symbol_enum, b4_declare_symbol_enum): New.
* data/skeletons/yacc.c: Use b4_declare_symbol_enum.
(YYUNDEFTOK, YYTERROR): Remove.
Use the corresponding symbol enum instead.
This package contains the GNU Bison parser generator.
Installation
Build from git
Here are basic installation instructions for a repository checkout:
$ git submodule update --init
$ ./bootstrap
then proceed with the usual configure && make steps.
The file README-hacking.md is about building, modifying and checking Bison.
Build from tarball
See the file INSTALL for generic compilation and installation instructions.
Bison requires GNU m4 1.4.6 or later. See https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/m4/m4-1.4.6.tar.gz.
Running a non installed bison
Once you ran make, you might want to toy with this fresh bison before
installing it. In that case, do not use src/bison: it would use the
installed files (skeletons, etc.), not the local ones. Use tests/bison.
Colored diagnostics
As an experimental feature, diagnostics are now colored, controlled by the
--color and --style options.
To use them, install the libtextstyle library before configuring Bison. It is available from https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/, for instance https://alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gettext/libtextstyle-0.20.5.tar.gz.
The option --color supports the following arguments:
- always, yes: Enable colors.
- never, no: Disable colors.
- auto, tty (default): Enable colors if the output device is a tty.
To customize the styles, create a CSS file, say bison-bw.css, similar to
/* bison-bw.css */
.warning { }
.error { font-weight: 800; text-decoration: underline; }
.note { }
then invoke bison with --style=bison-bw.css, or set the BISON_STYLE
environment variable to bison-bw.css.
Relocatability
If you pass --enable-relocatable to configure, Bison is relocatable.
A relocatable program can be moved or copied to a different location on the file system. It can also be used through mount points for network sharing. It is possible to make symlinks to the installed and moved programs, and invoke them through the symlink.
See "Enabling Relocatability" in the documentation.
Internationalization
Bison supports two catalogs: one for Bison itself (i.e., for the maintainer-side parser generation), and one for the generated parsers (i.e., for the user-side parser execution). The requirements between both differ: bison needs ngettext, the generated parsers do not. To simplify the build system, neither are installed if ngettext is not supported, even if generated parsers could have been localized. See http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2009-08/msg00006.html for more details.
Questions
See the section FAQ in the documentation (doc/bison.info) for frequently
asked questions. The documentation is also available in PDF and HTML,
provided you have a recent version of Texinfo installed: run make pdf or
make html.
If you have questions about using Bison and the documentation does not answer them, please send mail to help-bison@gnu.org.
Bug reports
Please send bug reports to bug-bison@gnu.org. Be sure to include the
version number from bison --version, and a complete, self-contained test
case in each bug report.
Copyright statements
For any copyright year range specified as YYYY-ZZZZ in this package, note that the range specifies every single year in that closed interval.