Delphi Compiler Error
E2153 ‘;’ not allowed before ‘ELSE’
Reason for the Error & Solution
You have placed a ‘;’ directly before an ELSE in an IF-ELSE statement. The reason for this is that the ‘;’ is treated as a statement separator, not a statement terminator – IF-ELSE is one statement, a ‘;’ cannot appear in the middle (unless you use compound statements).
program Produce; var b : Integer; begin if b = 10 then b := 0; else b := 10; end.
The Delphi language does not allow a ‘;’ to be placed directly before an ELSE statement. In the code above, an error will be flagged because of this fact.
program Solve; var b : Integer; begin if b = 10 then b := 0 else b := 10; if b = 10 then begin b := 0; end else begin b := 10; end; end.
There are two easy solutions to this problem. The first is to remove the offending ‘;’. The second is to create compound statements for each part of the IF-ELSE. If $HINTS are turned on, you will receive a hint about the value assigned to ‘b’ is never used.