[Oberon] OberonErrors.Text.

[Hans Klaver]

On Sat, Dec 31, 2022 at 9:18 AM <peter at easthope.ca> wrote:

> In the tutorial for the compiler in ETH Oberon, Andre mentioned OberonErrors.Text.
> https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Oberon/ETH_Oberon/Tutorial/Compiler#Debugging_compiler_detected_syntax_errors
> 
> The only list of errors I've found in ETHO 2.3.7 is in Oberon.Text.
> The best explanation I imagine is that OberonErrors.Text existed 
> before the list was incorporated into Oberon.Text.
> 
> Ideas?

I guess that indeed OberonErrors.Text predates Oberon.Text.

I have an old version of Oberon System (V 1.4 for PC/MS-DOS from 1992) which has a file OberonErrors.Text. This file has 300 Compile-time Error Numbers and 30 Run-time Trap Numbers. Also the Oberon Companion by André Fischer and Johannes L. Marais from 1997 mentions OberonErrors.Text (in section 2.5.1.1 on Compiler error handling). 

I don't know when the name changed to Oberon.Text or otherwise.

In the past the file OberonErrors.Text was more important for programmers than now because the compiler only gave error numbers and no worded description of the error (e.g. the 1992 compiler only gave 'pos 39 err 40'), so you had to look up what error 40 meant ;-(  

Debugging this way is described in Martin Reiser's The Oberon System (from 1991, on p. 60, section 5.2).

Luckily later versions of the Oberon compiler give descriptions of compile time errors. For trapped run-time errors a list of Trap codes is still indispensable. The current list is in Project Oberon (2013) part Applications, p. 50, section 12.7.10 Traps, with only 7 Trap numbers: https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/ProjectOberon/PO.Applications.pdf

Hans Klaver