Semicolon in C++?

Question

Is the \"missing semicolon\" error really required? Why not treat it as a warning?

When I compile this code

int f = 1
int h=2;

the

Answer 1

; is for the programmer's convenience. If the line of code is very long then we can press enter and go to second line because we have ; for line separator. It is programming conventions. There must be a line separator.

Answer 2

+1 to you both.

The semi-colon is a command line delimiter, unlike VB, python etc. C and C++ ignore white space within lines of code including carriage returns! This was originally because at inception of C computer monitors could only cope with 80 characters of text and as C++ is based on the C specification it followed suit.

I could post up the question "Why must I keep getting errors about missing \ characters in VB when I try and write code over several lines, surely if VB knows of the problem it can insert it?"

Auto insertion as has already been pointed out could be a nightmare, especially on code that wraps onto a second line.

Answer 3

int sdf = 1,df=2;
sdf=1 df =2

I think the general problem is that without the semicolon there's no telling what the programmer could have actually have meant (e.g may-be the second line was intended as sdf = 1 + df - 2; with serious typos). Something like this might well result from completely arbitrary typos and have any intended meaning, wherefore it might not be such a good idea after all to have the compiler silently "correct" errors.

You may also have noticed that you often get "expected semicolon" where the real problem is not a lack of a semicolon but something completely different instead. Imagine a malformed expression that the compiler could make sense out of by silently going and inserting semicolons.

The semicolon may seem redundant but it is a simple way for the programmer to confirm "yes, that was my intention".

Also, warnings instead of compiler errors are too weak. People compile code with warnings off, ignore warnings they get, and AFAIK the standard never prescribes what the compiler must warn about.