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5. Features of a compiler (2)

Error checking is not perfect.

A good compiler will try and spot errors in the source code, but often it will report errors that are not really there. These are called 'spurious errors'.

This happens because the compiler has to make assumptions about the rest of the code after detecting an intial error. Because of the assumptions, one real error might cause a whole cascade of other spurious error messages to appear in the report.

One of the skills of a programmer is to interpet the compiler error report to spot the real errors.