Re: Semantic error recovery

mauney@adm.csc.ncsu.edu (Jon Mauney)
Wed, 10 Nov 1993 16:45:23 GMT

          From comp.compilers
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[9 later articles]
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Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: mauney@adm.csc.ncsu.edu (Jon Mauney)
Posted-Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1993 16:45:23 GMT
Keywords: errors
Organization: (Administration machine NCSU Dept. Computer Science)
References: 93-11-023
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1993 16:45:23 GMT

Steve Boswell (whatis@gni.ai.mit.edu) wrote:
: Are there compilers that recover from semantic errors without a cascade of
: meaningless error messages? How do they do it?


The fact is that most commercial compilers have appallingly bad error
handling, despite the fact that reasonable techniques for handling both
syntax and semantic errors have been available for what seems like eons.


The semantic error technique is well known. For example essentially the
same approach is described in Fischer&LeBlanc's Crafting a Compiler. As
best I recall, Fischer taught this technique when I took compiler
construction back in 1978, and it probably was not new at that time.


Apparently, compiler customers do not spend enough time ridiculing vendors
for their egregious front-ends.
--

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