Flexible Language-Agnostic Framework To Emit Informative Compile-Time Error Messages

Abstract

It is observed that programmers encounter cryptic compiler error messages that are difficult to comprehend and hence inconvenient to resolve. Programmers spend a lot of their time in syntax error corrections. There is no universal tool that emits helpful descriptive error messages for all languages. In this paper, we propose a language-agnostic framework that detects syntax errors and produces error messages that are easy to comprehend. It allows domain experts to specify error messages for each type of syntax error. We use a novel approach wherein our framework provides the functionality of customizing error messages by providing a template for specifying the same. This makes it easier for novice programmers to understand the cause of compile-time errors in any programming language. Our results confirm that programmers prefer the enhanced error messages emitted by our framework over the standard error messages.