Re: [QUERY] A "ignorant newbie" question about compiler-writing.

>> Um, it may seem obvious, but it's not. The algorithm I described
>> ``taints'' everything that could possibly depend on the first
>> erroneous construct, and it refuses to issue error messages about
>> tainted things.


Depending on the lexical and syntactic structure of your language,
doing this 100% correctly this may be equivalent to the "taint
everything" approach.


Consider, for example, the following C file:


/* this is a silly example of how not to do it: */


blah() {
printf(42);
printf(43);
}


/* here ends our example */


The bug in that example is that the first line should not have
contained the `*/'. Since there's only one bug, there should be only
one error message, right? But I don't see how any tainting strategy
other than "taint everything" will avoid giving more than one error
message.


--
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>
PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3
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