Syntax errors, also known as parsing errors, are perhaps the most common kind of complaint you get while you are still learning Python:
>>> while 1 print 'Hello world' File "<stdin>", line 1 while 1 print 'Hello world' ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax >>>The parser repeats the offending line and displays a little `arrow' pointing at the earliest point in the line where the error was detected. The error is caused by (or at least detected at) the token preceding the arrow: in the example, the error is detected at the keyword
print
, since a colon (:
) is missing before it.
File name and line number are printed so you know where to look in case
the input came from a script.