xref: /original-bsd/usr.bin/yacc/NEW_FEATURES (revision 4b3fb397)
1     This version of Berkeley Yacc has been extensively reorganized and
2contains many new features.  It is an amalgam of three earlier versions
3of Berkeley Yacc.  It is largely untested, so expect it to contain bugs.
4When bugs are found report them to corbett@berkeley.edu.  Please
5include small examples if possible.
6
7     Despite my pleas not to be told of undocumented features of AT&T Yacc,
8I have received unsolicited descriptions of such features.  Telling me of
9such features places the public-domain status of Berkeley Yacc at risk.
10Please do not send me descriptions of undocumented features.  On the
11other hand, I would be very interested in learning of documented
12features I have not implemented.
13
14     The -l and -t options have been implemented.  The -l option tells
15Yacc not to include #line directives in the code it produces.  The -t
16option causes debugging code to be included in the compiled parser.
17
18     The code for error recovery has been changed to implement the same
19algorithm as AT&T Yacc.  There will still be differences in the way
20error recovery works because AT&T Yacc uses more default reductions
21than Berekeley Yacc.
22
23     The environment variable TMPDIR determines the directory where
24temporary files will be created.  If TMPDIR is defined, temporary files
25will be created in the directory whose pathname is the value of TMPDIR.
26By default, temporary files are created in /tmp.
27
28     The keywords are now case-insensitive.  For example, %nonassoc,
29%NONASSOC, %NonAssoc, and %nOnAsSoC are all equivalent.
30
31     Commas and semicolons that are not part of C code are treated as
32commentary.
33
34     Line-end comments, as in BCPL, are permitted.  Line-end comments
35begin with // and end at the next end-of-line.  Line-end comments are
36permitted in C code; they are converted to C comments on output.
37
38     The form of y.output files has been changed to look more like
39those produced by AT&T Yacc.
40
41     A new kind of declaration has been added.  The form of the declaration
42is
43
44	  %ident string
45
46where string is a sequence of characters begining with a double quote
47and ending with either a double quote or the next end-of-line, whichever
48comes first.  The declaration will cause a #ident directive to be written
49near the start of the output file.
50
51     If a parser has been compiled with debugging code, that code can be
52enabled by setting an environment variable.  If the environment variable
53YYDEBUG is set to 0, debugging output is suppressed.  If it is set to 1,
54debugging output is written to standard output.
55