Instead of displaying a generic syntax error:

Python 3.8.6 (default, Oct 10 2020, 18:31:21)
[GCC 10.2.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> for x in range
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    for x in range
                 ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>>

we could display:

>>> for x in range
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    for x in range
                  ^
SyntaxError: expected ':'

The same idea applies for every suite that has a missing ':'

There are several ways to implement this:

In PR24292 I implemented this idea by adding a new element to the grammar: '&&'. This allows to hard-expect a token: if the token is not there the parsing hard-fails immediately without trying anything else and displays an appropriate error message

The other possibility if we think that PR24292 is overkill is manually adding an "invalid_wathever" for every possible compound statement option that parses the statement with a !':' and then raises appropriately. This option is more verbose in the grammar but requires no new machinery.

PR 24293 implements the second idea (only new rules and no new machinery)

See also issue1634034.

I propose to go with the first approach. I really like that and I can see us using it in various place in the future. It's basically a positive lookahead with a cut, but the extra feature that it raises a SyntaxError, right?

I'll have a look at the PR now.

> See also issue1634034.

The problem with issue1634034 is that is not anymore possible without manual changes to the grammar with the PEG parser (or new infrastructure). The new parser does not have a defined concept of "i expected this token and now I am going to hard fail because is not there", but instead it will backtrack and try something else. We also did some work on something similar and we deemed it not useful as it was:

bugs.python.org/issue40599

> It's basically a positive lookahead with a cut, but the extra feature that it raises a SyntaxError, right?

Yeah, but the cut is "absolute" (because of the syntax Error). IIRC the normal cut only affects that rule, no?

> Yeah, but the cut is "absolute" (because of the syntax Error). IIRC the normal cut only affects that rule, no?

Right.

New changeset 58fb156edda1a0e924a38bfed494bd06cb09c9a3 by Pablo Galindo in branch 'master':
bpo-42997: Improve error message for missing : before suites (GH-24292)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/58fb156edda1a0e924a38bfed494bd06cb09c9a3