[squeak-dev] small fix to help newbies

P. uploaded at gmail.com
Mon Aug 8 17:14:23 UTC 2011


I agree with Bert. If the "Argument expected ->" message would appear right
after the colon, that would be of great help. Checking to see if there's a
comment where there should be an argument might be trickier (maybe by that
time the parser has already stripped the comments), but it would be a plus.
It's hard to suggest something other than that; it's really not enough to
just put the error message after the colon, because in the newbie's mind it
will now be pointing to a string (s/he still hasn't been informed that it's
a comment) so nothing has been clarified.
If detecting the comment is too hard for the parser, maybe just say
"expecting argument, found '.' ". That'll give me a clue and let me know
it's skipping "hey" for some reason.


On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 6:33 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>wrote:

>
> On 08.08.2011, at 10:44, Frank Shearar wrote:
>
> > On 8 August 2011 03:42, P. <uploaded at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Hi folks,
> >>
> >> I'm sending this email to both Squeak-dev and Pharo-project as you can
> see.
> >> This is to suggest a fix.
> >>
> >> I typed this on a workspace:
> >>
> >> closure := [:x | Transcript show: x].
> >> closure value: "hey".
> >>
> >> And when I "did it", the VM had me looking at this:
> >>
> >> closure := [:x | Transcript show: x].
> >> closure value: "hey". Argument expected ->
> >>
> >> Which is cryptic at best for a newbie.
> >> I visited #squeak at irc.freenode.net and asked there.
> >> Ken Causey helped me out and even he missed the difference between ""
> and ''
> >> for a second.
> >> I believe it would be beneficial to newbies to have this enhanced
> somehow,
> >> to point
> >> out the fact that strings aren't double-quoted.
> >
> > Tricky, given that the error message is correct. After you strip out
> > the comments, you have
> >
> >  closer value: .
> >
> > which is clearly not kosher.
> >
> > What kind of fix would work for you?
>
> It would be nicer if the "Argument expected" was shown right after the
> colon. Possibly the compiler could say what it saw instead ("found comment
> instead of argument").
>
> - Bert -
>
> > I'm just thinking that
> > special-casing when you have a process part of a keyword message send
> > followed by a comment is tricky:
> >
> >  this is: "valid" code
> >
> > for instance.
> >
> > frank
> >
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> Peter
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
>
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