[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #45967] More consistent error message style for parse errors

[Mike Miller]

Update of bug #45967 (project octave):

                Category:                    None => Interpreter            
                Severity:              3 - Normal => 1 - Wish               
              Item Group:                    None => Feature Request        
                  Status:                    None => Need Info              

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Follow-up Comment #1:

This is interesting. My first instinct is to say that they are really two
different kinds of errors, but I realized that command syntax allows
"sentences" like the first example to work just fine. Maybe "i" is a special
case in that it is both syntax and a built-in function named "i".

But compare


>> i am a bug
parse error:

  syntax error

>>> i am a bug
       ^

>> fft am a bug
error: invalid conversion from string to real scalar


Both "i" and "fft" are built-in functions, but with "fft" it does the normal
conversion from command to function call, and the error is different.

Perhaps it is a bug that "i am a bug" is flagged as a syntax error rather than
an invalid function call to the function named "i", but that's about it.

If your function were


function f ()
  1 +
endfunction


the same "parse error" would be thrown, because it is illegal syntax, not just
an invalid function call or reference to an unknown variable.

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