Syntax Errors

If you have not yet done so, enter, compile, and run the preceding program. As you may know from your previous programming experience, it is quite easy to accidentally type something incorrectly when entering code into your computer. Fortunately, if you enter something incorrectly into your program, the compiler will report a syntax error message when it tries to compile it. The Java compiler attempts to make sense out of your source code no matter what you have written. For this reason, the error that is reported may not always reflect the actual cause of the problem. In the preceding program, for example, an accidental omission of the opening curly brace after the main( ) method causes the compiler to report the following sequence of errors.
Example.
 Public static void main(String args[])
^
Example'class' or 'interface' expected }
 ^
 Example. 'class' or 'interface' expected
 ^ Example missing method body,
or declare abstract
Public static void main(String args[])
 ^
Clearly, the first error message is completely wrong because what is missing is not a semicolon, but a curly brace. The point of this discussion is that when your program contains a syntax error, you shouldn’t necessarily take the compiler’s messages at face value. The messages may be misleading. You may need to “second-guess” an error message in order to find the real problem. Also, look at the last few lines of code in your program that precede the line being flagged. Sometimes an error will not be reported until several lines after the point at which the error actually occurred.