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

[Wolfgang Bangerth]

> 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 :-(

W.

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Wolfgang Bangerth             email:            bangerth@ticam.utexas.edu
                              www: http://www.ticam.utexas.edu/~bangerth/