Rick Schaut (a Microsoft programmer working on the Macintosh version of Word, who I got to by xslf’s link to a long and patient discussion he has with a pair of AbiWord developers) posted a link to a list of funny C compiler error messages from the old Mac MPW compiler. Apparently, someone in Apple is rumoured to be adding these to the new Mac OS X compilers.
(I suspect I gave a bit too much context in that paragraph. This without mentioning that, oddly enough, I looked at AbiWord just the other day, after reading bad things about how OpenOffice now requires Java. And noticing that if I uninstalled all of MS Office from my laptop, I could have room for, oh, two more episodes of Justice League Unlimited).
Anyway, you have to admire a compiler that instead of spouting obscure gibberish actually says things like:
a typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your programThis array has no size, and that's badtype in (cast) must be scalar; ANSI 3.3.4; page 39, lines 10-11 (I know you don't care, I'm just trying to annoy you)Or:
This label is the target of a goto from outside of the block containing this label AND this block has an automatic variable with an initializer AND your window wasn't wide enough to read this whole error message
1 reply on “Funny Error Messages”
Glad you found the post. As for those rumors about XCode, check out the date on my post (then take a look at the “Currently playing in iTunes” song).
Rick