Translator – Assignments (Testing)

While testing comma separated assignment statements, an “unexpected character” error for statements like “A,B,C=4” was occurring from the Parser. This occurred because the Parser was seeing the line as an immediate command and expected a number for B. The Parser was modified to not return errors for these since these can be valid immediate statements.

Before testing the previous Translator tests that consisted of only expressions (which are not normally valid by themselves and would now cause “unexpected operator” errors), the test code needed to be modified for a special expression test mode that would be set for the first four sets of test expressions only. The Translator start() function was modified to optionally initialize the mode to Expression instead of Command.

The reference flags also need to be cleared for the arguments of internal functions as values are needed during run-time. This does not apply to define or user functions as the arguments are planned to be passed by reference by default. Surrounding a variable with parentheses will override this and pass the variable by value. For array subscripts, values are needed during run-time. Remember that the Translator does not know the difference between arrays and user functions, therefore, the reference flag will be left set for array subscripts along with function arguments. The Encoder can clear the reference flags for array subscripts once an array is identified.

While testing, I realized that the mode needed to be changed to Expression when an open parentheses occurs. Statements like “A=(B=3)” and “A=(B)=3” are single assignments and the second equals are the equality operator.  Testing continues...