Line Numbers and Syntax Errors
If a programmer introduces a syntax error into a program, the compiler (or interpreter) will inform the programmer that the attempt to compile (or execute) failed at the given line number. This simplifies the job of finding the error immensely for the programmer.
The use of line numbers to describe the location of errors remains standard in modern programming tools, even though line numbers are never required to be manually specified. It is a simple matter for a program to count the newlines in a source file and display an automatically generated line number as the location of the error. In IDEs such as Microsoft Visual Studio or Xcode, in which the compiler is usually integrated with the text editor, the programmer can even double-click on an error and be taken directly to the line containing that error.
Read more about this topic: Line Number
Famous quotes containing the words line, numbers and/or errors:
“Gascoigne, Ben Jonson, Greville, Raleigh, Donne,
Poets who wrote great poems, one by one,
And spaced by many years, each line an act
Through which few labor, which no men retract.
This passion is the scholar’s heritage,”
—Yvor Winters (1900–1968)
“Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they’re attached to dollar signs—unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendents who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)