Re: [Bison-Announce] Bison 3.4.91 released [beta]

[Akim Demaille]

Hi Frank,

Now to the core issue.

> Le 30 nov. 2019 à 06:52, Frank Heckenbach <address@hidden> a écrit :
> 
> The first warning vanishes with g++-9, but it might be a real issue.
> Though C[++] type promotion rules are still a horror to me, the
> following test program seems to do what Bison does and yields "0"
> (either compiler version, either compiled as C or C++) which
> (assuming that's correct for C[++]) would indicate that Bison's
> comparison is wrong.
> 
> #include <stdio.h>
> 
> int main ()
> {
>  enum { empty_state = -1 };
>  unsigned char c = empty_state;
>  printf ("%i\n", c == empty_state);
> }

Thanks a lot for catching this!  I believe the cure to be actually
very simple.  Here is my proposal.  Cheers!

commit d4a6c3c58ac085034858a0191ca7a814f737f024
Author: Akim Demaille <address@hidden>
Date:   Sat Dec 7 09:22:55 2019 +0100

    c++: beware of short ranges for state numbers
    
    Now that we use small integral types, possibly unsigned (e.g.,
    unsigned char), to store state numbers, using -1 to denote an empty
    state (i.e., a state that stores no semantical value) is very
    dangerous: it will be confused with state 255, which might be
    non-empty.
    
    Rather than allocating a larger range of state numbers to keep the
    empty-state apart, let's use the number of a state known to store no
    value.  The initial state, numbered 0, seems to fit perfectly the job.
    
    Reported by Frank Heckenbach.
    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2019-11/msg00016.html
    
    * data/skeletons/lalr1.cc (empty_state): Be 0.

diff --git a/data/skeletons/lalr1.cc b/data/skeletons/lalr1.cc
index 8a2bee04..71037a81 100644
--- a/data/skeletons/lalr1.cc
+++ b/data/skeletons/lalr1.cc
@@ -335,7 +335,8 @@ m4_define([b4_shared_declarations],
       symbol_number_type type_get () const YY_NOEXCEPT;
 
       /// The state number used to denote an empty symbol.
-      enum { empty_state = -1 };
+      /// We use the initial state, as it does not have a value.
+      enum { empty_state = 0 };
 
       /// The state.
       /// \a empty when empty.