I am doing programs in The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie.
I am currently at exercise 1-24 that says:
Write a program to check a C Program for rudimentary syntax errors like unbalanced parentheses, brackets and braces. Don't forget about quotes, both single and double,
escape sequences, and comments.
I have done everything well... But I am not getting how escape sequences would affect these parentheses, brackets and braces?
Why did they warned about escape sequences?
In "\"", there are three double quote characters, but still it's a valid string literal. The middle " is escaped, meaning the outer two balance each other. Similarly, '\'' is a valid character literal.
Parentheses, brackets and braces are not affected, unless of course they appear in a string literal that you don't parse correctly because of an escaped quote.
Parentheses, brackets and braces are not affected. -That is what I wanted! Thanks!!!
Parentheses, brackets and braces are not affected. Except when they are within a pair of quotes, in which case, they should be ignored for syntax checking purposes.
I'd guess they mean that you need to differentiate between " (which starts or ends a string) and \" (which is a " character, possibly inside a string)
This is important if you're to avoid reporting e.g. strlen("\")"); as having unbalanced parentheses.
The obvious possibility would be an escaped quote inside a string. If you don't take the escape into account, you might think the string ended there. For example: "\")\"". The ) is part of the string literal, so it doesn't count as a mis-matched parenthesis.
\"as part of the syntax?char excerpt[] = "\"Aha!\" he said.";