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MPW C Error Messages

Those of us who've been programming the Mac for a few years have some fond memories of the old Macintosh Programmer's Workbench (MPW). It was very much like the Terminal Window on OS X, but had a few quirks of its own.

Among those quirks were the error messages that the C compiler would give you for certain errors. Messages like, "a typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program," and "String literal too long (I let you have 512 characters, that's 3 more than ANSI said I should)" almost made you want to write broken code just to see what the compiler had to say.

The most complete list of the error messages I could find is here.

Well, rumor has it that there's a skunk works at Apple who are busy porting some of these error messages into XCode 2.0. And they say that Apple have lost their sense of humor...

 

Rick

Currently playing in iTunes: Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who

Published Friday, April 01, 2005 6:54 AM by Rick Schaut
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Friday, April 01, 2005 3:23 PM by HMK's Spurious Thoughts

# MPW C Error Messages

Rick Schaut digs up some of the cool MPW C Error messages. You haven't lived if you never compiled a substantial MacApp-based application on a 8 MHZ 68000-based Mac. Upgrading to a 16MHZ 68030 machine helped, but you could still...
Friday, April 01, 2005 11:03 PM by dj

# re: MPW C Error Messages

I have a distant memory of some humorous error messages in the old Berkeley 4.2 (Vax-11) Unix manuals. One line quipped "If you get this error message, consult a Guru." Another one said, "For a more detailed explanation, read the source code."

Even Microsoft had a sense of humor at one time. I recall that in Version 1 of MS-Word for DOS, if the copy protection scheme sensed a violation the program came back with something like: "Error: copy protection violation, the C: drive is being erased".
Of course, the program did not erase the hard disk. I though it was pretty funny, but someone probably lost their job over it.
Sunday, April 17, 2005 11:48 PM by Rajesh

# re: MPW C Error Messages

Those error messages brought back some old memories. I loved that compiler. Apple was trying to get in shape for some time and was not in a mood for such goodies. Good to here they are getting their old self in XCode 2.0.
Friday, September 08, 2006 8:36 AM by themoniker: Funny Error Messages

# themoniker: Funny Error Messages

Friday, September 08, 2006 8:36 AM by Funny Error Messages by themoniker () | LjSEEK.COM

# Funny Error Messages by themoniker () | LjSEEK.COM

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