sch (03/29/83)
I got a really wierd one today. gecos BCD constant illegal from 4.1BSD C compiler. It was from having a character quoted with back quotes ` (grave accents), didn't even know this was in the language... very odd.
turner (04/02/83)
#R:linus:-1831900:ucbesvax:4800001:000:238
ucbesvax!turner Apr 1 14:07:00 1983
On the subject if weird C compiler error messages, I have some,
although I can't remember the corresponding code:
"stuck starg" - sounds like the name of some hapless sci-fi hero.
"bad zzz code" - compiler went to sleep?wolit (04/04/83)
I just tried quoting a character literal with a grave accent on a
4.2bsd system, and got the same result (except that the first word was
"gcos", not "gecos"). My guess is that this is a very old vestigial
error message, referring to the GCOS operating system on the Honeywell
6000 computer at Bell Labs, Murray Hill. ("GCOS", by the way is
derived from "GECOS", the first two letters referring to General
Electric, who manufactured this line of machines before Honeywell
bought them out.) GCOS dealt with characters in BCD, not ASCII,
format.
Jan Wolitzky, BTL MH