Re: c/2776: Wrong (misleading) error message in gcc 2.95.3

[Mirsad Todorovac <mtodorov@alu.hr>]

The following reply was made to PR c/2776; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Mirsad Todorovac <mtodorov@alu.hr>
To: Wolfgang Bangerth <bangerth@ticam.utexas.edu>
Cc: gcc-bugs@gcc.gnu.org, <gcc-gnats@gcc.gnu.org>
Subject: Re: c/2776: Wrong (misleading) error message in gcc 2.95.3
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 19:48:38 +0100 (CET)

 On Wed, 19 Feb 2003, Wolfgang Bangerth wrote:
 
 >
 > > I apologize if I was wasting your precious timewith this as it now seems
 > > not so important issue, but I wasted so much time resolving it that I
 > > thought it was important to be resolved, or at least known issue.
 > >
 > > Thank you for your time. Mirsad
 >
 > No problem. This is just one of the cases where what you wanted would
 > require the compiler to second-guess what was your original intention.
 > Your example boiled down to
 >   char *p = hip hop step;
 > The problem was the missing quotes (which the compiler can't know, since
 > the three tokens came from the preprocessor, and there might be many
 > possible interpretations of what the orginal intent was:
 >   char *p = "hip hop step";
 >   char *p = hip+hop+step;     // hip=char*, hop,step=int
 >   char *p = hiphopstep;       // hiphopstep=char*
 > etc. There is just not something sensible the compiler can say here,
 > except for "parse error" or so.
 >
 > With respect to the fact that the error message was totally
 > incomprehensible: most experienced programmers know that if something is
 > _really_ incomprehensible, the look at the preprocessed sources. I'd say
 > this is for exactly the same kind of experience you just made :-(
 
 Thank you for this explanation, which makes things much clearer. I
 understand that AI is probably not a good thing to install in a compiler,
 since a compiler has to be small and reliable, hasn't it? :-))
 
 Be blessed,
 M.