• Nick (6/6) Aug 11 2004 Calling an undefined function gives a rather strange error message:
• J C Calvarese (34/44) Aug 11 2004 It doesn't seem like much of a bug to me. The compiler is trying very
• Walter (3/3) Aug 15 2004 The 'int' you're seeing is the result of the compiler, at the first erro...

Nick <Nick_member pathlink.com> writes:

Calling an undefined function gives a rather strange error message:

foo() gives

tst.d(3): undefined identifier foo
tst.d(3): function expected before (), not 'int'

There's no 'int' anywhere :)

Nick

J C Calvarese <jcc7 cox.net> writes:

Nick wrote:
 Calling an undefined function gives a rather strange error message:
 
 foo() gives
 
 tst.d(3): undefined identifier foo
 tst.d(3): function expected before (), not 'int'
 
 There's no 'int' anywhere :)
 
 Nick

It doesn't seem like much of a bug to me. The compiler is trying very 
hard to understand what you gave it. The first suggestion is produces 
absolutely right on the mark: "What's foo?" Once you define your 
function, the compiler doesn't assume it's an int anymore, does it?

The second line is the result of the compiler trying to be helpful, but 
the compiler can't read the mind of the user. It seems that the compiler 
assumes you meant to declare an int when it finds an undefined 
identifier. The second line isn't a very good guess in this case, but 
int is a common datatype, so could be helpful often.

Another case:

void main()
{
     foo[];
}

Output...
test.d(4): undefined identifier foo
test.d(4): int cannot be sliced with []

It seems to support my theory about the int assumption.


By the way, the code you specified gives this:
test.d(1): no identifier for declarator
test.d(1): semicolon expected, not 'EOF'


I suspect you were using code like this:

void main()
{
     foo();
}

test.d(4): undefined identifier foo
test.d(4): function expected before (), not 'int'


DMD used to only produce pretty much one error at a time, but I like 
this new capability to produce multiple errors.

-- 
Justin (a/k/a jcc7)
http://jcc_7.tripod.com/d/

"Walter" <newshound digitalmars.com> writes:

The 'int' you're seeing is the result of the compiler, at the first error,
trying to patch things up so it can proceed. It does this by just assuming
one meant 'int' and then going forward.