Bizzare error for invalid if

[Y-Less]

Issue description:

Missing the brackets on an if statement gives an error about invalid subscripts:

error 028: invalid subscript (not an array or too many subscripts): "var"
error 029: invalid expression, assumed zero
warning 215: expression has no effect
error 001: expected token: ";", but found "-end of file-"

This would be a far better error:

error 001: expected token: "(", but found "-identifier-"

Minimal complete verifiable example (MCVE):

main()
{
	new var;
	if var
	{
	}
}

Workspace Information:

• Compiler version:
• Command line arguments provided (or sampctl version):
• Operating System:

3.10.10

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity.

[Daniel-Cortez]

Since there are no parentheses, the compiler expects keyword *then after the if control expression, e.g.:

if var *then *begin /* ... */ *end

or

if var *then { /* ... */ }

I'm not sure how many people actually use this alternative syntax, but it's still valid in our version of Pawn (IIRC it was removed only in Pawn 3.3).

Anyway, since keyword *then is missing in the example as well, the compiler treats the opening { as a continuation of the control expression, as if var was subscripted as a byte array, hence the "invalid subscript" error.
In other words, the compiler works correctly.

But I think we should probably consider removing *then, *begin and *end, as it was done in 3.3, because these keywords may complicate diagnostics, as it was well shown in the 1'st post (and also because they're ugly).

[Daniel-Cortez]

@pawn-lang As I explained in the above post, the compiler works correctly, so this issue should probably be closed.