NEWS

This is the file NEWS for the flex package. It records user -visible
changes between releases of flex.

See the file COPYING for copying conditions.

* version 2.6.4

* version 2.6.3 released 2016-12-30

** scanner

*** several bug fixes resolved problems introduced in recent flex
    versions regarding processing of comments, literals and various
    quoting scenarios.

*** If the path to m4 was sufficiently long, a buffer overflow could
    occur. This has been resolved. The fix also removes dependence on
    the constant PATH_MAX.

** build

*** A new configure option --disable-bootstrap changes the behavior of
    the build system when building flex. The default
    "--enable-bootstrap" behavior is to build flex, then to use that
    flex to build flex again. With --disable-bootstrap, the scanner is
    simply built by sedding the scanner source. This is friendlier to
    cross compilation.

*** The compatibility functions in lib/ are no longer built as a
    library. Instead, they are built as $(LIBOBJ) objects. This is
    simpler and friendlier to cross compilation.

*** It is now possible to build flex without building the accompanying
    libfl. This is friendlier to cross compilation. See the
    --disable-libfl option to configure. Resolves #99.

*** the PIC version of libfl was not correctly built. It is no longer
    included in the build/installation targets of flex since it was
    unused.

*** the distributed man page is only rebuilt when the relevant source
    files change or when the binary doesn't exist. In particular, this
    is friendlier to cross compilation. Resolves #108

** test

*** the shell scripts in the test suite are more portable across different shell implementations.

* version 2.6.2 released 2016-10-24

** flex internals

*** a segfalt involving yyrestart(NULL) has been fixed

*** flex should now handle quoting when mixed with m4 processing correctly

*** flex handles `[[' and `]]' correctly

*** flex no longer generates non-ANSI code

*** more compilation warnings were squashed in generated scanners

*** prevented a buffer overflow that could occur when input buffers were the exact wrong size

** test suite

*** input filenames on MSWindows are now calculated correctly

*** general code cleanups in a number of tests now make the test suite compile much more cleanly

** build system

*** the xz archive has been replaced with an lzip archive

*** a new option to configure --enable-warnings to encapsulate passing
    of warning-related flags which is useful in testing flex

*** make indent now works for out of source builds

*** Portability warnings when generating Makefile.in files are now suppressed; they were just noise and the use of GNU extensions in Makefile.{am,in,} was intentional and well known.

** bugs

*** resolved gh#67

** new sv translation from the translation project

* version 2.6.1 released 2016-03-01

** flex resources

*** The flex project is now hosted at github. Consider this a "period of transition". In particular, you should start at https://github.com/westes/flex for the flex codebase, issue tracking and pull requests.

*** New releases of flex are to be found at https://github.com/westes/flex/releases.

** flex internals

*** Flex now uses more modern and more standard names for variable types. There's more work to be done on that front yet, though.

*** A number of compiler warnings have been remedied.

*** Line directives should now  work as expected and be absent when that is expected.

** test suite

*** When running the test suite, c++ files are compiled with the c++ header inside the flex distribution, rather than relying on the build system's flex header , which might not be installed yet or which might be out of date with respect to what flex tests expect.

*** Some portability fixes in the test suite such as opening files for reading in binary mode

** Building flex

*** The file src/scan.c asdistributed  with flex source is now built with the current version of flex. Occasionally this had to be done manually to pick up new flex features. It's now just a part of flex's build system.

*** The pdf version of the manual is no longer distributed with flex, although if you have the texinfo package installed, you can still build it.

*** lots of general build system cleanup

*** the build system tries a bit harder to find libtoolize and texi2dvi.

*** When help2man and texi2dvi are missing, the error messages are now much more helpful.

** bug fixes

*** resolved github issues #53, #54, #55, #61.

*** Resolved sf bugs #128, #129, #155, #160, #184, #187, #195.

* version 2.6.0 released 2015-11-17

** User Visible Changes

*** C++ scanners now use references instead of pointers. See the manual for details.

*** A number of compiler warnings were addressed, so flex generated scanners should be quieter under compiler warning scenarios.

*** Allow error reporting routines to accept varying number of arguments

*** Removed deprecated 'register' storage class specifier

*** Changeed output formats from octal to hexadecimal

*** check limits before using array index cclp; resolves sf-166

*** Suppress clang warning about empty @param paragraph; resolves sf#158

*** Fixed malloc/realloc replacement, resolves sf bug#151.

*** Adjusted buffer sizes on ia64.

*** various documentation and code clean up fixes: resolves sf bugs #167, #168, among other patches.

** Flex Internals

*** flex is now organized into subdirectories. This keeps the tree neater at the top level and puts like things near each other and unlike things away from each other.

*** The test suite has been reorganized and is now run with the parallel test suite harness from automake.

*** Cleaned up the automake parts of the build system to better reflect what automake does on its own. Also added a call to libtoolize in autogen.sh because autoreconf gets confused without a prior run of libtoolize.

*** po/Makefile now includes a rule to fetch the latest translations from the translation project. "make -f po/Makefile getpo" from the top level of the flex tree will fetch the files.

*** New da translation from the translation project

* flex version  2.5.39 released 2014-03-26

** no user visible changes in this release

* version 2.5.38 released 2014-02-14

** internationalization

*** add sr translation from the translation project

*** update da, es, ko, nl, pt_BR, ro, ru, sv, tr, vi, zh_CN translations from the translation project

*** rename zh_tw to its proper zh_TW name

* version 2.5.37 released 2012-08-03

** Import flex into git. See
   git://flex.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/flex/flex.

** Fix make install target to not fail when the flex++ program is
   already installed

** New translations from the translation project: de, fi, pl, vi

* version 2.5.36 released 2012-07-20

** various portability fixes that quiet compiler warnings on 64-bit
   hosts

** various manual fixes, including correcting the name of a %option and
   updating some simple examples to use ANSI C syntax

** various bug fixes that prevent certain error conditions from
   persisting when they should not persist

** improvements to the test suite so it behaves better when linking
   compiled files

** new translations from the translation project: ca, da, es, fi, fr,
   ga, ko, pt_br, ro, ru, sv, tr, zh_cn

** the flex distribution is now built with automake 1.10.1 and automake
   2.61

* version 2.5.35 released 2008-02-26

** fixed bug that prevented flex from accepting certain comments in the
  scanner file (resolves bugs #1849809 and #1849805)

** fix bug that prevented headers for all functions from being generated
  (resolves bug #1628314)

** change yy_size_t to be size_t (resolves bug #1849812)

** new de, nl, pl, pt_br, vi translations from the translation project

* version 2.5.34 released 2007-12-12

** introduce yylex_init_extra; see the manual for details

** introduce %option extra-type="your_type *" (resolves bug #1744505)

** The flex program now parses multiple short concatenated options (resolves bug
  #1619820). Thanks to Petr Machata of Red Hat on this issue.

** better checking after yyalloc/yyrealloc (resolves bug #1595967)

** flex now provides for a libfl_pic.a compiled with position
   independent code. Particularly useful when including a flex scanner
   in a shared library and with more recent versions of gcc. Thanks to the Debian project for the idea.

** SourceForge feature request #1658379: Expose YY_BUF_SIZE in the
	header file.

** flex better escapes filenames with special characters in them
   (resolves bug #1623600)

** a memory leak was plugged(resolves bug #1601111)

** pattern language expanded; see the manual for details on the below
   highlights

*** pattern options added to specify patterns as case-insensitive or
    case-sensitive

*** pattern options to specify whether the "." character should match
    the newline character

*** pattern options added to allow ignoring of whitespace in patterns

*** POSIX character classes may be negated in patterns

*** patterns may now use set difference, union operators

** the manual now contains an appendix listing various common patterns
   which may be useful when writing scanners

** some memory leaks were removed from the C++ scanner (but the C++
  scanner is still experimental and may change radically without
  notice)

** c++ scanners can now use yywrap

** added new unit test for c++ and yywrap

** portability fixes to some unit tests

** flex man page and flex manual in pdf now distributed in the flex
distribution

** new ca, vi, ga, nl translations from the translation project

** flex no longer comes with an rpm spec file

** flex development now happens with automake 1.9.6

* version 2.5.33 released 2006-2-20

** all flex resources are now to be found from the website at
   http://flex.sourceforge.net/

** there was no release 2.5.32 published

** numerous bug and security fixes

** new nl, vi, sv, ro, po, ga, ca, fr, tr translations from the translation project

** upgrade to use gettext 0.12 (this now makes the "pdf" and "ps"
   targets in the build system able to be run successfully)

* version 2.5.31 released 2003-4-1

** remove --enable-maintainer-mode configure option; none of the
   Makefiles were using it and it can be unduely confusing

* version 2.5.30 released 2003-4-1

** yylineno is per-buffer in reentrant scanners

** added %top directive for placing code at the top of the generated
   scanner; see manual for details

** flex now uses m4 to generate scanners; while this means that
   scanners are more readable, it means that flex requires m4 to be
   installed; see manual for details

* version 2.5.29 released 2003-3-5

** Automatic stack management for multiple input buffers in C and C++ scanners

** moved the flex documentation to a new doc/ subdirectory

** cleanups to the yy namespace

* version 2.5.28 released 2003-2-12

** flex is now hosted at sourceforge

** Fixed trailing slash bug in YY_INPUT macro def

** Flex now warns if always-interactive is specified with fast or full

* version 2.5.27 released 2003-1-21

** flex now works with recent bison versions

** new pt_br translation from the translation project

* version 2.5.26 released 2003-1-14

** Fixed table deserialization bug on big-endian archs. Patch sent from Bryce Nichols <bryce@bnichols.org>

** yyleng has proper declarations now; this caused flex to generate
   unusable scanners for some programs

** the flex distribution now includes a spec file suitable for use
   with rpm

** some more c++ fixes

** new es translation from the translation project

** slight tweeks to the flex_int*_t types

** flex now warns about pattern ranges that might be ambiguous when
   generating a case-insensitive scanner


* version 2.5.25 released 2002-12-2

** flex now uses flex_int*_t types. For C99 systems, they are just the
   int*_t types; for non-C99 systems, we just make some typedefs

** new pt_br translation from the translation project

* version 2.5.24 released 2002-11-25

* more portability fixes

** the manual continues to be updated and edited, but it's still got a
   ways to go

** it is possible to have multiple c++ scanners in the same program again

** new turkish translation from the translation project

* version 2.5.23 released 2002-10-21

** more portability fixes

** the manual includes a title page and a table-of-contents when printed

** the test suite can be run with "make check" from the top-level
   directory

** configure now accepts the --enable-maintainer-mode option

** gettext functionality is now only available externally

** the constant FLEX_BETA is defined if flex is a beta release

** the script create-test was not included in the distribution and it
   should have been

* version 2.5.22 released 2002-10-10

** more portability fixes around how we get ahold of the integral
   types; there is a constant FLEX_NEED_INTEGRAL_TYPE_DEFINITIONS
   which you should define if you don't have the <inttypes.h> header
   file (after you complain to your C vendor for not providing a
   reasonable C environment)

** more test suite cleanups; in particular, the test suite should run
   correctly when build from a different directory

** upgraded automake to 1.7 and consequently autoconf to 2.54; this
   means, among other things, that there is some support for
formatting the manual in postscript and pdf in the distributed
   Makefile.in (and therefore in the Makefile built by configure)

** the flex.1 manpage is generated by help2man; (this has been true
   for quite a while but was not listed here)

** flex now includes three defined constants to indicate which version
  of flex generated a scanner (YY_FLEX_{MAJOR,MINOR,SUBMINOR}_VERSION)

** flex tries its best to output only the relevant portions of the
   skeleton when generating a scanner, thus avoiding as much
   conditional compilation as possible

* version 2.5.21 released 2002-9-17

** one of the tests in the test suite broke the dist target

* version 2.5.20 released 2002-9-16

** A flex scanner has the ability to save the DFA tables to a file,
   and load them at runtime when needed; see the manual for details

** Added %option bison-bridge (--bison-bridge)

** Removed %option reentrant-bison/--reentrant-bison/-Rb

** yylineno is present in all scanners; Modified nasty performance
   penalty warning with yylineno in documentation

** test-table-opts is now run last in the test suite because it's so fat

** flex can, to some extent, diagnose where internal problems occur

** new translations from the translation project: fr, ca, de, ru, sv

**Flex generates C99 defs now; see YY_TRADITIONAL_FUNC_DEFS in the
  manual if that's not a good thing for you

* version 2.5.19 released 2002-9-5

** prevent segfault on input lines which are longer than the allocated
   space (problem report from Manoj Srivastava
   <srivasta@golden-gryphon.com>)

** Changed option 'header' to 'header-file'

* version 2.5.18 released 2002-9-4

** portability fixes for integer constants and in the way the test
   suite reports its results

** the test for bison was reporting bison missing when it was, in
   fact, found

** if we don't find GNU indent, we're more careful when we're not
   finding it

* version 2.5.17 released 2002-8-29

** more portability fixes

** updated config.sub and config.guess

** flex is indented by GNU indent (this was done earlier but not
   explicitly documented)

* version 2.5.16 released 2002-8-28

** c++ scanners compile again

** there is now an indent target in the top-level Makefile; configure
   checks for GNU indent which is required for proper operation of the
   indent target

** some more portability fixes were made

** %options and invocation sections of manual merged

** a c++ test was added to the test suite

** we're trying to clean up more files in the test suite's make clean
   targets

* version 2.5.15 released 2002-8-21

** reject-state buffer is now dynamically allocated and REJECT buffer
   variables are reentrant-safe

** manual now discusses memory usage

** skeleton now processed by m4 before mkskel.sh; (this only matters
   if you want to change the skeleton or if you're doing flex development)

** zh_cn translation added from translation project

** a bug that caused a segfault has now been fixed

** the test suite now respects the usual CFLAGS, etc. variables

** removed some warnings which some tests trigggered with the -s option

** the flex-generated header file now tries to be smarter about
   conditionally including start conditions

** tables code omitted from generated scanner when not used

* version 2.5.14 released 2002-8-15

** the tests using the reentrant c scanner as c++ were reworked
   slightly to be sure that the c++ was enforced

** de translation now included in the distribution

** various portability fixes regarding nls support, c++ include
   headers, etc.

* version 2.5.13 released 2002-8-15

** the header file output with %option header is now much smaller

** Fixed type mismatch in printf in scanner skeleton

** yylex_init now reports errors

* version 2.5.12 released 2002-8-8

** updated gettext support to 0.11.5

** new fr translation from the translation project

** bison is no longer needed to build flex; If you are building flex
   from a release (i.e., not from a cvs snapshot), then you don't need
   to have a pre-built lex around either (unless you modify scan.l, of
   course); (This has been true for some time, but was not mentioned
   here.)

* version 2.5.11 released 2002-7-31

** Fixed bug where yyless did not consider yylineno

** the yylineno performance hit is now gone

** fixed some typos in the manual and we now include texinfo.tex in
   the distribution

** traditional prototypes output for C scanners, controlled by a
   preprocessor symbol; see documentation for details

* version 2.5.10 released 2002-7-24

** yy_globals renamed to yyscanner and yy_globals_t renamed to
   yy_guts_t

** added dist-bzip2 option to Makefile.am so we now produce a bzip2'd
   archive in addition to the standard gzip archive

*  version 2.5.9

** new tests in test suite: test-mem-{nr,r}, test-posix,
   test-posixly-correct, test-debug-{nr,r}

** made changes to work with gcc-3.2 development code

** ability to choose which memory functions are used in flex

** new yylex_destroy() function for the non-reentrant scanner

** new handling of POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable

** the test suite now has its copyrights explicitly described

** new ca, de, fr, ru, sv, tr translations

* version 2.5.8

** a new --posix option generates scanners with posix-style abc{1,3}
   compatible parsing, see manual for the screwy details

* version 2.5.7

** configure.in now includes a call to AC_PREREQ to enforce the
   requirement for autoconf at least 2.50 (This only effects you if
   you're doing flex development.)

** configure now uses autoconf's versioning information and configure
   --help reports the bug-reporting address for flex

** test suite now only reports success versus failure; reporting
   skipped is problematic under the current setup

** compilation with --disable-nls now works

** flex can now be built in a separate directory

* version 2.5.6

** gettext support added (from gettext 0.11)

*** translations for ca, da, de, es, fr, ko, ru, sv, tr included

** distribution now built under automake 1.6 and autoconf 2.53

** command-line option parsing happens differently now:

*** Added long option parsing

*** Options -n and -c, previously deprecated, now simply do nothing

*** Options are now parsed left to right

** added a number of new options

*** All positive %options are now accessible from the command line

*** Added option -D, to define a preprocessor symbol

*** Added option --header=FILE to specify a C .h file to generate

*** added option --yywrap to call yywrap on EOF

*** added option --yylineno to track line count in yylineno

*** --yyclass=NAME name of C++ class when generating c++ scanners

*** for long option names which are associated with existing short
options, see accompanying documentation

*** new %option nounistd or command-line --nounistd added to prevent
    flex from generating #include <unistd.h> on systems that don't
    have that include file

** Support for reentrant C scanners has been added

*** Updated the manual with the new reentrant API

*** Two new options %option reentrant (-R) and 
%option reentrant-bison (-Rb)

*** All globals optionally placed into struct yyglobals_t

*** All access to globals replaced by macro invocations

*** All functions optionally take one additional
argument, yy_globals

*** New style for invoking reentrant scanner:
yylex_init(void** scanner );
yylex( scanner );
yylex_destroy( scanner );

*** Added get/set functions for members of struct yy_globals_t
e.g.,  yyget_text, yyget_leng, etc

*** Prefix substitution added for new functions

*** Macro shortcuts to the lengthy get/set functions
provided for use in actions, e.g.,  yytext, yyleng, etc

*** Arbitrary, user-defined data, "yyextra", may be added to scanner

** %option nomain no longer implies %option yywrap
But the inverse is still true

** Developer test suite added

*** TESTS/ directory has been added. Users can 
'make test' in the TESTS directory to execute the test suite

** Support for bison variables yylval and yylloc added

** automake support for the build process

** manual is now in texinfo/info format

*** flex.1 removed from distribution

** flex no longer generates C-language scanners with C++-style
   comments

** flex now generates scanners in c++ which are compatible with
   recent c++ compilers

** flex input scanner now recognizes '\r' as an EOL character

See the file ONEWS for changes in earlier releases.

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