.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!