Dangling Else

  • In a programming language, something is called ambiguous, if it can be interpreted in more than 1 way
  • An optional else clause in an if-then(-else) statement results in nested conditionals being ambiguous
  • The context-free grammar is ambiguous (there is more than one parsing tree)
if a then s
if b then s1 else s2

Nested statements are ambiguous:

if a then if b then s else s2

This can be interpreted as:

if a then (if b then s) else s2
if a then (if b then s else s2)

In LR Parsers, the dangling else is an example of a shift-reduce conflict.

There are multiple ways to solve this problem:

  1. By convention, the dangling else is always paired with the innermost if statement.
  2. By using explicit blocks, such as begin...end in Pascal or {...} in C.
  3. Change syntax and include end if statement.
  4. Don’t allow single if statements.

References

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