From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2008-11-25T03:48:39+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:20076] Re: better error messages?

On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 09:04:55AM +0900, Roger Pack wrote:
> http://www.dmh2000.com/cjpr/ notes that the [common] syntax error
> sequence in ruby is:
> 
> "Many of the compiler diagnostics I got during the Ruby porting simply
> said "syntax error" and gave the line number for the last line in the
> file. Great. I spent a lot of time doing binary searches on my code to
> find the error source. "
> 
> Can anything be done to perhaps help this?  I run into it at times, as
> well, and...it makes things definitely hard to track down.

I find this generally happens with a missing do or end, especially with
DSL-like constructs that require a 'do'.

ruby-1.9 with -w now produces an indentation warning which often helps.