Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> Of course. The more redundant (that is, verbose) the syntax is, the
> easier it is both for the programmer to get something wrong and for
> the compiler to catch when something is wrong.

Not necessarily, and this is one of the problems with C.  It's not always as
obvious to a human when the wrong special character is used, for example,
than a more verbose keyword.  It is easier to get "{" or "}" wrong than the
more verbose "begin" or "end", for example.  The latter are bigger patterns
to match against and more obvious when they are wrong, especially to a
casual observer.

I had exactly this case last week.  I added one more symbol to a C ENUM, and
apparently typed ")" instead of "}" to close the list.  These two look
fairly similar, so I didn't notice.  That, and the fact that I don't do C
that often caused several wasted minutes trying to figure out why the code
wouldn't compile.  The C18 compiler's cryptic "syntax error on line xxxx"
didn't exactly help either.

I'm pretty sure that if I had been required to type END or something more
verbose than "}", the mistake would never have happened or I would have
noticed it much quicker.


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