Missing semicolon is just one instance of the class of errors known as "systematic errors" in programming languages research ( "plus/minus one" errors is another instance of this class)

Literature is available for free only to academic researchers, so some money might be involved in getting access.

You can start with

A statistical analysis of syntax errors - ScienceDirect
 For example, approximately one-fourth of all original syntax errors in the Pascal sample were
missing semicolons or use of comma in place of semicolon … 4) indicates that this type of error
is quite infrequent (80o) and hence needn't be of as great a concern to recovery pro …

PDF Error log analysis in C programming language courses

BOOK Programming languages
JJ Horning - 1979 - books.google.com
… to note that over 14% of the faults occurring in topps programs during the second half of the
experiment were still semicolon faults (compared to 1% for toppsii), and that missing semicolons
were about … Every decision takes time, and provides an opportunity for error …
n assessment of locally least-cost error recovery

SO Anderson, RC Backhouse, EH Bugge… - The Computer …, 1983 - academic.oup.com
… sym = semicolon in the former, one is anticipating the possibility of a missing semicolon; in contrast,
a missing comma is … 13, p. 229) if sy = semicolon then insymbol else begin error(14); if sy = comma
then insymbol end Both conditional statements accept semicolons but the …
The role of systematic errors in developmental studies of programming language learners

J Segal, K Ahmad, M Rogers - Journal of Educational …, 1992 - journals.sagepub.com
… Errors were classified by their surface characteristics into single token (missing … gathered from
the students, was that they would experience considerable difficulties with using semicolons,
and that … the specific rule of ALGOL 68 syntax concerning the role of the semicolon as a …
  Cited by 9 Related articles
Follow set error recovery

C Stirling - Software: Practice and Experience, 1985 - Wiley Online Library
… Some accounts of the recovery scheme mention and make use of non-systematic changes to
their recursive descent parsers in order to improve … In the former he anticipates the possibility of
a missing semicolon whereas in the latter he does not anticipate a missing comma …

A first look at novice compilation behaviour using BlueJ 
MC Jadud - Computer Science Education, 2005 - Taylor & Francis
… or mark themselves present from weeks previous they may have missed—either way … change
programmer behaviour—perhaps encouraging them to make fewer “missing semicolon” errors,
or be … or perhaps highlight places where semicolons should be when they are missing 

Making programming more conversational
A Repenning - 2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages …, 2011 - ieeexplore.ieee.org
… Miss one semicolon in a C program and the program may no longer work at all … Similar to code
auto-completion approaches, these kinds of visual programming environments prevent syntactic
programming mistakes such as missing semicolons or typos 

In reply to Re^4: What esteemed monks think about changes necessary/desirable in Perl 7 outside of OO staff by likbez
in thread What esteemed monks think about changes necessary/desirable in Perl 7 outside of OO staff by likbez

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