checking java predefined methods

Question

I'm just wondering on how would you check java codes like

System.Out.println("hi");

it should check if the syntax is correct. I've used a java template in ANTLR, but I'm not quite sure that ANTLR provide checking predefined java methods. Is it possible to check it by using another tool?

Answer 1

It doesn't matter which generator you use as long as the grammar describes the language accurately. It's unnecessary to treat built-in classes and methods specially as they are no different than user-defined ones.

Answer 2

The moment your checks start looking at other compilation units you are generally past syntax checking and into semantic checking. A simple grammar parser is not generally able to detect issues like this.

Why not use javac directly? Or even the compiler API provided by modern Java implementations?