Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!draken!d88-bli
From: d88-bli@nada.kth.se (Bo Lindbergh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: ';' inserted (Re: MPW wish list)
Message-ID: <2899@draken.nada.kth.se>
Date: 9 Feb 90 14:45:00 GMT
References: <10865@claris.com>
Reply-To: d88-bli@nada.kth.se (Bo Lindbergh)
Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Lines: 20

In article <10865@claris.com> drc@claris.com (Dennis Cohen) writes:
...
>I think that a better solution for such simple errors would be one that was
>in one of the first Pascal compilers I ever used (1979). The University of
>Wisconsin's Univac 1100 compiler gave a warning message with the context and
>continued to compile, treating the source as though the semicolon were there.
>If Fischer and LeBlanc could do that on a Univac 11 or 12 years ago, it seems
>that we should have compilers that do that now.  Some errors were non-
>recoverable; however, I've missed that "friendliness" in every compiler I've
>used since then.

The Microsoft Pascal compiler for MS-DOS does this too...
I suppose this doesn't help you very much.  ;-)

Anyhow, I miss this feature too.  It isn't that hard to extend the syntax to
include common errors like missing semicolons or semicolon before 'else', so
why isn't it done more often?  Are compiler writers just lazy?

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