Re: RFC: Requiring the ending `;'

[Hans Aberg]

At 04:32 -0800 2002/03/04, Paul Eggert wrote:

>POSIX 1003.1-2001 says:
>
>  The parser constructed by yacc implements an LALR(1) parsing
>  algorithm as documented in the literature.  It is unspecified
>  whether the parser is table-driven or direct-coded.

OK. Thanks.

I think that the Bison --yacc option should be enhanced to ensure that the
defaults are set to that of the POSIX Yacc specifications. Thus, an
invokation
  bison --yacc <yacc-options>
should be equivalent to
  yacc <yacc-options>
as far as POSIX goes. Under UNIX, if one does not have Yacc, but only
Bison, one can alias "yacc" to "bison --yacc".

As the defaults, one by one, and be overridden by options, one can always
arrive at the yacc compatible or bison modification one wants.

The point of this move is to make Bison more flexible now when there
appears to come forth multiple parser algorithm and output language
support, and other developments: As long as one still can choose the Yacc
compatibility by a --yacc option, it is less important what Bison chooses
as its defaults. Bison can then better be developed around these new
features that were not considered when Yacc once, a very long time ago.

  Hans Aberg