[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #48082] Cannot set breakpoint on files that have invalid identifiers as names

[Lachlan Andrew]

Follow-up Comment #3, bug #48082 (project octave):

Thanks for the update, Emma.

Breakpoints wouldn't have helped here, because they are only encountered when
the code executes.  It doesn't execute at all if there is a syntax error,
because the whole file is parsed once when it starts running.

The current message isn't the clearest of errors, but it shows roughly the
offending line. It is one line off, because Octave allows a (...) expression
to span multiple lines, and it doesn't realise there was an error until it has
read "location" instead of ")", or perhaps "*" or something else that could
form part of an expression.

That off-by-one issue is one of the reasons why it says "near line ..."
instead of "in line ...".  I know gcc always used to report errors on the line
following a line with a missing ';', so this isn't unique to Octave.

Given that

  for n=1:length(TC(:,1)
                 * ones (1,1000))
      disp (n)
  end

is valid code, can you suggest a better error message?  Perhaps it could
mention how many levels of brackets are open, and where the most recent one
started.  I'm not sure how technically feasible that is.

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