| .TH BISON 1 local |
| .SH NAME |
| bison \- GNU Project parser generator (yacc replacement) |
| .SH SYNOPSIS |
| .B bison |
| [ |
| .B \-dlvty |
| ] file |
| .SH DESCRIPTION |
| .I Bison |
| is a parser generator in the style of |
| .IR yacc (1). |
| It should be upwardly compatible with input files designed |
| for |
| .IR yacc . |
| .PP |
| Input files should follow the |
| .I yacc |
| convention of ending in ``.y''. |
| Unlike |
| .IR yacc , |
| the generated files do not have fixed names, but instead use the prefix |
| of the input file. |
| For instance, a grammar description file named |
| .B parse.y |
| would produce the generated parser in a file named |
| .BR parse.tab.c , |
| instead of |
| .IR yacc 's |
| .BR y.tab.c . |
| .PP |
| .I Bison |
| takes five optional flags. |
| .TP |
| .B \-d |
| Produce a |
| .B .tab.h |
| file, similar to |
| .IR yacc 's |
| .B y.tab.h |
| file. |
| .TP |
| .B \-l |
| Omit |
| .B #line |
| lines in the parser output file. Error messages from the C compiler will |
| then be associated with lines in the parser output file, instead of lines |
| in the original grammar file. |
| .TP |
| .B \-t |
| Turn on debugging. This option causes the |
| .I bison |
| output to have debugging code made available via the C pre-processor. |
| The external variable |
| .B yydebug |
| should be made non-zero to have the debugging code actually |
| produce output. |
| .TP |
| .B \-v |
| Be verbose. Analogous to the same flag for |
| .IR yacc . |
| .TP |
| .B \-y |
| Use fixed output file names. I.e., force the output to be in files |
| .BR y.tab.c , |
| .BR y.tab.h , |
| and so on. This is for full |
| .I yacc |
| compatibility. |
| .PP |
| If |
| .I bison |
| is invoked with the name |
| .IR yacc , |
| it will behave like |
| .I yacc |
| does. This is equivalent to simply supplying the |
| .B \-y |
| flag. |
| .SH FILES |
| /usr/local/lib/bison.simple simple parser |
| .br |
| /usr/local/lib/bison.hairy complicated parser |
| .SH SEE ALSO |
| .IR yacc (1) |
| .br |
| The |
| .IR "Bison Reference Manual" , |
| included as the file |
| .B bison.texinfo |
| in the |
| .I bison |
| source distribution. |
| .SH DIAGNOSTICS |
| ``Self explanatory.'' |
| ... ha! |