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From: mjr@decuac.DEC.COM (Marcus J. Ranum)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Semicolons (Re: Low-Rent Syntax)
Keywords: C, design, debug
Message-ID: <3263@decuac.DEC.COM>
Date: 25 Aug 90 17:39:25 GMT
References: <9008202341.AA06543@llama.ingres.com> <4032@rtifs1.UUCP>
Sender: compilers-sender@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: mjr@decuac.DEC.COM (Marcus J. Ranum)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Washington ULTRIX Resource Center
Lines: 34
Approved: compilers@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us

In article <4032@rtifs1.UUCP>, trt@rti.rti.org (Thomas Truscott) writes:

> prog.c: line 13: dubious indentation level.

	No! No, please! Not indentation in the compiler! :) Next we'd
see things like:

prog.c: line 666: complicated expression, please comment it

> 	p = malloc(strlen(s));
> 			    ^
> prog.c: line 32: was "strlen(s) + 1" intended?

	What if 'p' was part of (or going to be part of) some data
structure that contained the string size encoded in some other manner ? I
can imagine building such capabilities into a pre-processor of some sort,
that did idiot checking based on some information about the kind of things
you wanted to do, but I don't think it belongs in the compiler (please!).

	I'm really impressed with the functionality something like Saber-C
provides for catching stupid errors like the one above. Somehow, support
for catching that kind of thing needs to be built into the development
process at code-writing-time, not at compile-time. Do any syntax-directed
editors handle such things ? I can imagine a syntax directed editor that
understood The One True Brace Style :), had lint built into it, and so on.
That way I wouldn't have to use it!

mjr.
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