Improving ANTLR DSL parse-error messages

Posted by Dan Fabulich on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Dan Fabulich
Published on 2010-02-14T23:45:43Z Indexed on 2010/03/17 15:51 UTC
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Filed under:

antlr

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dsl

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error-handling

I'm working on a domain-specific language (DSL) for non-programmers. Non-programmers make a lot of grammar mistakes: they misspell keywords, they don't close parentheses, they don't terminate blocks, etc.

I'm using ANTLR to generate my parser; it provides a nifty mechanism for handling RecognitionExceptions to improve error handling. But I'm finding it pretty hard to develop good error-handling code for my DSL.

At this point, I'm considering ways to simplify the language to make it easier for me to provide users with high-quality error messages, but I'm not really sure how to go about this. I think I want to reduce the ambiguity of errors somehow, but I'm not sure how to implement that idea in a grammar.

In what ways can I simplify my language to improve parse-error messages for my users?

EDIT: Updated to clarify that I'm interested in ways to simplify my language, not just ANTLR error-handling tips in general. (Though, thanks for those!)

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