I have never understood how the code for these messages works but it
sure is annoying not to see the offending line. I'll see what I can do.
I'm surprised a binary search with 3 splits took 20-30 minutes. Maybe
your text editor is very slow?
To avoid copying the file you can put in a known-bad line and move it
around until you see that it has moved over the invalid number.
A decent error message would be better, though.
Henry Rich
On 10/12/2020 2:29 PM, Arthur Anger wrote:
I recently spent 20-30 minutes tracking down the source of an error condition caused by
an ill-formed number. The error reported during load began with '[-726]', and named the
offending verb, but did not display the line (or even just the "number").
The verb contained only about half that number of lines. The script had a few
more than 700, so scrolled back from its end about that far, to an area in the
offending verb, but did not easily spot the error.
I copied the verb definition to a separate file, and reloaded, getting the
identical errror message. Only after two more splits did I get a small enough
file to get the negative-line count close enough to the error to recognize it
on careful reading
My conclusion is that the error reports a count of statements, perhaps
including empties, but also including controls such as do. and else.
It is certainly useful to have some indicator of the error's location, but I
find the current indicator difficult to use.
--A number based on physical lines in the file would be more useful.
--A number counted from the top would be more conventional.
--A display of the offending character string would allow an immediate search
for it, which should nearly always be a unique target.
Thanks in advance to the team that considers an improvement in error reporting
and--perhaps--chooses and manages to install one.
--Art
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