Re: CINT debug capabilities

Rene Brun (Rene.Brun@cern.ch)
Wed, 03 Mar 1999 10:50:36 +0000

Masaharu Goto wrote:
>
> Patrick,
>
> Thank you for specifying the problem in detail.
> I can improve CINT with this kind of feedback
>
> >i think that many of the
> >users of ROOT/CINT are novice C++ programmers and are astonished that
> >code that did run in script mode does not compile. having a more
> >restrictive environment (such as pointing out that '->' is not equal
> >to '.') would also solve some subtle problems. i personally don't care about
> >saving a few keystrokes (2 vs. 1 in the above example) unless you know
> >what you are doing.
>
> Under such situation, I agree with you. CINT is in favor of sloppy scripting.
> As long as the meaning is understandable, it accepts wrong syntax. This is
> a design philosophy issue. Whether to take strictness or sloppiness.
> It is possible to display warning message. The problem is transition to
> new behavior. Some people will be surprised by the warning message which
> did not come up before. Need to think how to avoid confusion.
>
> Rene, how do you think about Patrick's comment?
>

We discussed this issue a long time ago.
Personally, I am in favour of a sloppy syntax at the command line only.
CINT should issue a Warning (not an error) in case of C++ syntax
violation
in a macro.

Rene Brun