Re: Compiler error messages

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Larry says

<<> Many is the time when a compiler has reported an error to me, most
> elaborately and cleverly, and been completely and 100% wrong about the true
> nature/source of the error.  And boy does it make me spit.  Hands up who
> hasn't been infuriated by a 'smart' compiler producing reams of completely
> spurious errors (after one legitimate one), presumably because the compiler
> writer thought it would be really clever for the compiler to 'ignore' the
> first error.  I always prefer compilers which simply stop at the first
> error.  What a sad waste of effort.
>>

The idea of stopping on the first error is not an unreasonable one, but
in practice most people prefer to find more than one error on each
compilation if possible.

If you really like to get only the first error, then use the GNAT
switch -gnatm1, that is what it is there for. 

But doing good error recovery is definitely not wasted effort for
two reasons:

1. Figuring out what really went wrong and recovering from it are
closely related tasks.

2. As I say above, many, I would guess most people prefer multiple
error messages.

By the way, in the Ada case, it is of course impractical to validate
a compiler that does not have pretty good error recovery!