Syntax Errors

Syntax errors occur if you mistype a keyword, forget to close a multiline command (such as DO … LOOP), or introduce a similar syntax error. If your script includes a syntax error, the script will not execute and an error message is generated.

Note In some programming environments, syntax errors are referred to as pre-processor, compilation, or compile-time errors.

The result of a syntax error depends on what type of debugging you are doing:

• If the syntax error is in a server script and if debugging is enabled for the ASP-based application, document processing stops. The server starts the script debugger, which displays the error message. If the browser that requested the document is on a different computer, the browser displays an error indicating that the document could not be found, as shown in the following illustration:

  

• If the syntax error is in a server script, but debugging is not enabled for the ASP-based application, error text is passed through and displayed in the client browser instead of the requested page, as shown in the following illustration:

  

• If the syntax error is in a client script, the document loads, but the script in which the error occurs does not run properly. The exact behavior of the script at that point will depend on where in the script the error occurs. Each time the script is run, the error message appears again. The following illustration shows a typical error message:

  

  Tip The text of the error message might not always reflect the exact error. For tips about finding errors, see Debugging Tips and Tricks.

If you write programs in other environments, you will notice that syntax errors are handled differently in HTML scripts. In Visual Basic, for example, syntax errors are caught by the interpreter as soon as you leave the line in which the error appears. However, when you write scripts for HTML documents, the code is not interpreted until the code is executed — namely, when the document is requested by a browser.

Runtime Errors

Logic Errors

Server Script Debugging

Client Script Debugging

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