From: Matthew Smillie <M.B.Smillie@...>
Date: 2006-08-19T05:33:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Syntax checker wtf?

On Aug 18, 2006, at 21:08, inboulder wrote:

>> IMHO you're greatly underestimating the effor.  I guess even for  
>> perl it
>> was not "a simple addition" - and from what I can see a lot more  
>> efforts
>> were put into perl vs. ruby.
>
> Would it really be that difficult to say 'unterminated expression
> started on line 10' rather than 'syntax error - last line of file - go
> fish'?

Actually yes.  Error identification and recovery in parsing is a  
difficult task to begin with, engineering it into an existing system  
is far from trivial.

While I usually find "go change it yourself" to be a little  
dismissive, in this case it's pretty applicable; delve into the  
source and see how errors are handled and it'll give you a little  
perspective on the task.  I might also recommend a good uni course on  
compilers and language design.

matthew smillie.