Subj : Re: Compiler and an interpreter
To   : comp.programming
From : Jon Harrop
Date : Fri Jul 29 2005 07:15 pm

anjali wrote:

> Suppose in a source-code file, the 4th line contains the first syntax
> error.Can anybody please tell me how the compiler and interpreter will
> behave when the given file will be the input to them?
> 
> My guess is that the compiler will go through the entire file and will
> report all the syntax errors in the file while the interpreter will
> stop its execution exactly after the 4th line and will say that there
> is a syntax error in the 4th line.

As a syntax error is a parse error, the compiler/interpreter will stop
during parsing and will never actually compiler or interpret any code.

Some compilers stop at the first syntax error (e.g. OCaml). Others try to
recover and continue parsing (e.g. MLton). The former makes it more tedious
to correct a source file containing many trivial syntax errors. The latter
will often recover incorrectly and report nonsensical errors in the
remainder of the code.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
http://www.ffconsultancy.com

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