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Error Recovery in Parsing

The document discusses error recovery in parsing, emphasizing the importance of a parser's ability to detect and handle compile-time errors such as lexical, syntactic, and semantic errors. It outlines four common error recovery strategies: Panic Mode, Statement Mode, Error Production, and Global Correction, each with its advantages and disadvantages. The document highlights the need for effective error handling to ensure continued parsing despite errors in the input code.

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Shams Uddin Sakib
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12 views2 pages

Error Recovery in Parsing

The document discusses error recovery in parsing, emphasizing the importance of a parser's ability to detect and handle compile-time errors such as lexical, syntactic, and semantic errors. It outlines four common error recovery strategies: Panic Mode, Statement Mode, Error Production, and Global Correction, each with its advantages and disadvantages. The document highlights the need for effective error handling to ensure continued parsing despite errors in the input code.

Uploaded by

Shams Uddin Sakib
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CSE4129: Formal languages and Compilers

Error Recovery in Parsing

• A parser should be able to detect and report any error in the program.
• The process of locating errors and reporting it to user is called Error Handling
Process.
• It is expected that when an error is encountered, the parser should be able to
handle it and carry on parsing the rest of the input.
• A parser is mainly responsible for handling of the Compile time errors which may
be encountered at various stages of the compilation process.
• A program may have the following kinds of errors at various stages of
compilation:
▪ Lexical Phase Errors (name of some identifier typed incorrectly)
▪ Syntactic Phase Errors (missing semicolon or unbalanced parenthesis)
▪ Semantic Errors (incompatible value assignment)

There are four common error recovery strategies that can be implemented in the parser to
deal with errors in the code.

1. Panic Mode:
• In this method, when an error is encountered anywhere in the statement,
successive characters from the input are ignored one at a time until a
designated set of synchronizing tokens is found. Synchronizing tokens are
delimiters such as ; or } .
• The advantage of this method is that it is the easiest to implement and
guarantees not to go to infinite loop.
• The disadvantage is that a considerable amount of input is skipped without
checking it for additional errors.

2. Statement Mode:
• In this method, when a parser encounters an error, it performs necessary
correction on remaining input so that the rest of input statement allow the
parser to parse ahead.
• The correction can be deletion of extra semicolons, replacing comma by
semicolon or inserting missing semicolon.
• While performing correction, utmost care should be taken for not going in
infinite loop.
• Disadvantage is that it finds difficult to handle situations where actual error
occurred before point of detection.
CSE4129: Formal languages and Compilers

3. Error Production:
• If user has knowledge of common errors that can be encountered then, these
errors can be incorporated by augmenting the grammar with error
productions that generate erroneous constructs.
• If this is used then, during parsing appropriate error messages can be
generated and parsing can be continued.
• Disadvantage is that it is difficult to maintain.

4. Global Correction:
• The parser examines the whole program and tries to find out the closest match
for it which is error free.
• The closest match program has a smaller number of insertions, deletions and
changes of tokens to recover from erroneous input.
• Due to high time and space complexity, this method is not implemented
practically.

References:
1. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/error-detection-recovery-compiler/
2. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/compiler_design/compiler_design_error_recovery.htm

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