Translator – Expression Types and Parentheses

Normally during the translation process, parentheses tokens are removed. However, for reporting errors with the data type of an expression, if an expression starts with an parentheses and is the wrong data type, then the error needs to point to the opening parentheses, not to a token inside the parentheses.

When a closing parentheses is received and processed, after emptying the hold stack of all operators, the opening parentheses will be popped from the hold stack. Previously, both the open and closing parentheses tokens were deleted. If the parentheses were unnecessary, the parentheses sub-code was set in the last operator appended to the output. The last operator will also be on top of the done stack with it's first operand. Consider this invalid statement:

Z$ = A$ + B$ + (C + D * E)

When the closing parentheses is processed, there will be a * token on top of the stack and its first operator will be set to the C token. The “expected string expression” should point to the open parentheses. Therefore, the closing parentheses needs to change the first operand token to the open parentheses token. This also means that the open parentheses token can't be deleted.

Since the open parentheses token can't be deleted, it must be marked as a temporary token (using a Temporary sub-code). When an operator token is popped from the done stack (either by another operator or at the end of the expression when a command is processed), if it contains a temporary first operand token, the token must be deleted.

When an error occurs, or an expression is prematurely ended (also an error), the data type of the first operand will be checked to determine which error will be reported (based on what type of expression is expected). Open parentheses tokens do not have a data type. Therefore, when an operator's first operand is set to an open parentheses token, it must inherit the data type of the first operand that it is replacing.

Parentheses may also be nested, so another open parentheses token may replace a first operand that is already set to an open parentheses. No extra checking is necessary since the previous open parentheses will have a data type – the new open parentheses token will inherit the same data type.