Python needs better error reporting

[Tim Peters]

[Tim]
> Error-reporting in parsers has been the subject of intense
> research.  Do a little digging and come back when you can
> make a case that your point can be addressed effectively.

[/F]
> fwiw, I've seen Lisp advocates argue that this may be
> one of Lisp's greatest advantages...

If so, the quality of Lisp advocacy has suffered a precipitous decline since
my day <wink>.  I spend less time puzzling over syntax errors in Python than
I spent tracking down stuttered or missing parens in Lisp code, and in the
presence of read macros errors in Lisp input can be arbitirarily difficult
to spot.  I routinely spend gobs of time trying to figure out what's wrong
in C source, though -- e.g., forget a semicolon after a struct declaration
and it's likely to take the next identifier as declaring a variable of the
struct type, and the subsequent cascade of nonsensical error msgs is truly
amazing.  Lisp is mounds better than C in that respect -- but so is Python.

don't-even-think-about-c++-ly y'rs  - tim