Bison supports both traditional single-letter options and mnemonic long option names. Long option names are indicated with ‘--’ instead of ‘-’. Abbreviations for option names are allowed as long as they are unique. When a long option takes an argument, like ‘--file-prefix’, connect the option name and the argument with ‘=’.
Here is a list of options that can be used with Bison, alphabetized by short option. It is followed by a cross key alphabetized by long option.
Operations modes:
#define statements in addition to an enum to associate
token numbers with token names. Thus, the following shell script can
substitute for Yacc, and the Bison distribution contains such a script
for compatibility with POSIX:
#! /bin/sh
bison -y "$@"
The -y/--yacc option is intended for use with
traditional Yacc grammars. If your grammar uses a Bison extension
like ‘%glr-parser’, Bison might not be Yacc-compatible even if
this option is specified.
midrule-values$2 in:
exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
Also warn about mid-rule values that are used but not set.
For example, warn about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
These warnings are not enabled by default since they sometimes prove to
be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc constructs
$0 or $-n (where n is some positive integer).
yaccconflicts-srconflicts-rr%expect or %expect-rr directive is specified, an
unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an expected number of
conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning then have
no effect on the conflict report.
otherThis category is provided merely for the sake of completeness. Future
releases of Bison may move warnings from this category to new, more specific
categories.
allnoneerrorA category can be turned off by prefixing its name with ‘no-’. For instance, -Wno-yacc will hide the warnings about POSIX Yacc incompatibilities.
Tuning the parser:
YYDEBUG to
1 if it is not already defined, so that the debugging facilities are
compiled. See Tracing Your Parser.
-D or
--define, Bison reports an error for any %define
definition for name.
-F or
--force-define instead, Bison quietly ignores all %define
definitions for name.
%define
definitions for name.
You should avoid using -F and --force-define in your
make files unless you are confident that it is safe to quietly ignore
any conflicting %define that may be added to the grammar file.
%language was specified (see Bison Declaration Summary). Currently supported languages include C, C++, and Java.
language is case-insensitive.
This option is experimental and its effect may be modified in future
releases.
%locations was specified. See Decl Summary.
%name-prefix "prefix" was specified.
See Decl Summary.
#line preprocessor commands in the parser
implementation file. Ordinarily Bison puts them in the parser
implementation file so that the C compiler and debuggers will
associate errors with your source file, the grammar file. This option
causes them to associate errors with the parser implementation file,
treating it as an independent source file in its own right.
%skeleton
(see Bison Declaration Summary).
If file does not contain a /, file is the name of a skeleton
file in the Bison installation directory.
If it does, file is an absolute file name or a file name relative to the
current working directory.
This is similar to how most shells resolve commands.
%token-table was specified. See Decl Summary.
Adjust the output:
%defines was specified, i.e., write an extra output
file containing macro definitions for the token type names defined in
the grammar, as well as a few other declarations. See Decl Summary.
--defines except -d does not accept a
file argument since POSIX Yacc requires that -d can be bundled
with other short options.
%file-prefix was specified, i.e., specify prefix to use
for all Bison output file names. See Decl Summary.
statelookaheadstate and augments the description of the automaton with
each rule's lookahead set.
itemsetstate and augments the description of the automaton with
the full set of items for each state, instead of its core only.
%verbose was specified, i.e., write an extra output
file containing verbose descriptions of the grammar and
parser. See Decl Summary.
The other output files' names are constructed from file as
described under the ‘-v’ and ‘-d’ options.