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Support #1650

Potentially confusing prompt: waiting for semicolon

Added by John Abbott over 2 years ago. Updated about 1 month ago.

Status:
In Progress
Priority:
Normal
Assignee:
-
Category:
Parser/Interpreter
Target version:
CoCoA-5.4.2
Start date:
24 Jan 2022
Due date:
% Done:

70%

Estimated time:
Spent time:
0.90 h

Description

The following could be confusing:

/**/ A := L[1
[[waiting for semicolon]] /**/

Can we find a better name for the prompt?

History

#1 Updated by John Abbott over 2 years ago

How about [[command incomplete]]?
Though that does read rather like an error message...

#2 Updated by John Abbott 4 months ago

  • Status changed from New to In Progress
  • % Done changed from 0 to 10

Since some languages (such as Julia) do not require semicolons to end the command while CoCoA does, perhaps the a common cause of an incomplete command is indeed a missing semicolon... and in this case the prompt is reasonably helpful.
The example I gave is "awkward": but if the user were then to type a semicolon then a more precise/helpful error will be produced.

I'm now tempted to say that we stick with the current prompt until someone comes up with a better suggestion (and/or there is a genuine case where the prompt is badly misleading).

Should we reject this issue?

#3 Updated by John Abbott about 2 months ago

It does seem to be hard to find a better prompt without it become too long (and possibly still not covering all cases).

Here are some more suggestions:
  • [[cmd incomplete, missing semicolon?]]
  • [[cmd incomplete, missing ";"?]]
  • [[incomplete or missing ";"?]]

#4 Updated by Anna Maria Bigatti about 2 months ago

  • % Done changed from 10 to 30

I don't mind the current message, but also

[[incomplete or missing ";"?]]

is fine for me.

#5 Updated by John Abbott about 2 months ago

Some more thoughts:
  • How long may the prompt be?
  • For whom is the prompt meant to be useful?

For a complete beginner (or someone unfamiliar with CoCoA-5) it may be helpful to hint that a semicolon is needed to end the command; for anyone with more experience (and thus is aware that a semicolon is needed) there is no need to mention about a semicolon.

The word "semicolon" is rather long; Anna had suggested just putting the symbol inside quote marks (to keep the mesg shorter). I'm undecided about this. A non-english speaker might find it helpful to see the symbol -- likely not everyone knows that it is called "semicolon".

[[cmd incomplete]] is correct and fairly short, but not really terribly helpful (esp. for beginners).

Well, may it does not matter much for experienced users precisely what the message is -- they will probably quickly guess what the problem is. A beginner could easily be more perplexed: several systems do not require a terminating semicolon (or even interpret it as an indication not to print the result) -- switching from such a system to CoCoA-5 could be jarring (as is the reverse switch).

How about a very succinct [[forgot ";"?]]

#6 Updated by Anna Maria Bigatti about 2 months ago

  • % Done changed from 30 to 70

How about a very succinct [[forgot ";"?]]

yes!

#7 Updated by John Abbott about 2 months ago

Another suggestion
[[incomplete or forgot ";"?]]

#8 Updated by John Abbott about 2 months ago

Anna suggests
[[waiting for ";"]]

#9 Updated by Anna Maria Bigatti about 1 month ago

John Abbott wrote:

Anna suggests
[[waiting for ";"]]

checked in LineProviders.C

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