Bison is a general-purpose parser generator that converts a grammar description for an LALR (1) context-free grammar into a C program to parse that grammar. Once you are proficient with Bison, you may use it to develop a wide range of language parsers, from those used in simple desk calculators to complex programming languages. Bison is upward compatible with Yacc: all properly written Yacc grammars ought to work with Bison with no change. Anyone familiar with Yacc should be able to use Bison with little trouble. You need to be fluent in C programming in order to use Bison or to understand this manual. The books in the iUniverse.com Computer Books Series are composed of freely available online computer manuals, industry standard specifications, and electronically distributed computer-programming guides. They include open documents' collections of industry specifications and standards and a collection of the best open source documentation on the Web...the most complete open source library available anywhere. Each book contains the complete, unabridged text of the original document. The on-demand publishing process gives you the actual text of the online document in a convenient, inexpensive, easy-to-use format. And remember...iUniverse.com donates a portion of the profits from open document and open source books to support the mission of the free software community.