jack@boring.uucp (Jack Jansen) (05/17/86)
>In article <baylor.643> peter@baylor.UUCP writes: >> >>On the other hand, I found VAX/VMS 'C' a real pain after UNIX because it >>put all the error messages in this huge ugly listing instead of a brief >>list so I could find them. Of course the stupid bloody editor that didn't >>have a shell escape or any sort of facility for editing multiple files >>didn't help. > Hah! You thought that was bad? You should run the program main() { foo(bar) } through the prime C compiler. It will say something along the following lines: foo(bar); ^ Error #274, Source file = c.c, line 2. Severity=Error Class=fixable. Dear programm}ier. You seem to have used a variable called "bar" in the above-mentioned line. However, you never told me what "bar" is. In my infinite helpfulness, I've inserted a "static int bar" declaration at the innermost level (this is, the innermost level at the time of the fault). I should warn you that, even though I say that this error is fixable, that this does not imply that I will hereafter produce a runnable program. It merely means that I will continue to look for more dumb mistakes, which will give me a chance to print more of these polite and lengthy error messages. [I may have overdone the frasing a bit, but the idea is clear, I hope]. Problem is, there's *nobody* who benefits from such an explanation. Experienced user could do with 2: bar undefined and novices probably don't have a clue what 'innermost levels' and 'statics' are. -- Jack Jansen, jack@mcvax.UUCP The shell is my oyster.