[Python-ideas] Reporting unmatched parentheses in SyntaxError messages?

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Wed Jul 8 07:53:44 CEST 2015


One of the more opaque error messages new Python users can encounter
is a syntax error due to unmatched parentheses:

    File "/home/me/myfile.py", line 11
        data = func()
        ^
    SyntaxError: invalid syntax

While I have no idea how we could implement it, I'm wondering if that
might be clearer if the error message instead looked more like this:

    File "/home/me/myfile.py", line 11
        data = func()
        ^
    SyntaxError: invalid syntax (Unmatched '(' on line 10)

Or, similarly,

    SyntaxError: invalid syntax (Unmatched '[' on line 10)
    SyntaxError: invalid syntax (Unmatched '{' on line 10)

I'm not sure it would be feasible though - we generate syntax errors
from a range of locations where we don't have access to the original
token data any more :(

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia


More information about the Python-ideas mailing list