Can Modern Syntax beat 1977?

Computer Recreations Creative Computing, Sept-Oct. 1977 D. Van Tassel

Syntax Messages

In the March-April 1977 issue I suggested you write a program to generate as many different syntax-error messages as possible with as few statements in the program as possible.

I received a few responses but first prize must go to Wayne M. Compton of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He sent me a COBOL program with just one statement which generated 570 error messages. The statement was just the program name paragraph:

PROGRAM-ID. ERRMSG.

The compiler then went wild and generated 570 error messages. He ran this program on a IBM 370 OS/VS system. If you have access to such a system you might try it.