Re: [Chicken-users] odd compiler messages on program structure errors

[Jörg F . Wittenberger]

Hello Claude,

On Oct 7 2017, Claude Marinier wrote:

> Good afternoon,
>
> Things are good.

Great to hear.

> ...
> I either get "unterminated list" or "unexpected list terminator: #\)". I
> realize too late that I should have made a copy of the failing code. Sorry.
>
> So, should we be concerned about this?

Yes we should.  I some way or another.

Unbalanced parenthesis however are a very basic syntx violation in any 
LISP. Adding in that the syntax is extensible, it is exceptionally hard to 
do something reasonable about the situation.

Some favor "readable LISP" like SRFI's 110 and 119 - both of which infer 
missing list terminators from changes in intentiation.

But many LISPers use emacs and - having been burned by the phenomenom early 
in their carrers - developed a habbit to always insert/delete them in 
corresponding pairs and have their editor indent automatically. Once 
accustomed to this style, they often prefer this over manually figuring out 
how much text they actually need to mark for edits.

In the end of the day, misplaced delimiters happen. They are nasty. I'm 
among those who accepted the occational pain.

Best

/Jörg