I had the rare pleasure of a train ride the other day. It was a pleasant carriage with an informative scrolling display listing all the stations we were calling at on the way to Carlisle. This would have been helpful and reassuring but for the fact we were going to London. As an infrequent train user I did have a worrying time thinking “surely I didn’t get on the wrong train? … did I? … I wouldn’t be that stupid? … would I?”. Unfortunately I know I can be that stupid so I was a little nervous.

QT - neat development environment that is Mac/Linux/Windows independent - comes with a load of tools. I’ve just been using some of them and they don’t work

It’s not a major problem, just a minor bug or perhaps not even that. QT project files can contain comments which are started with # and terminate at the end of line. Lines can be extended with \. The problem is a comment which isn’t line extended ends the line and more importantly the block eg

SOURCES = \
FILE1.c \
FILE2.cpp \
# a comment
FILE3.c
HEADERS = \ etc
FILE3.c isn’t part of the Sources block because of the new line after the comment.
# comment \
would be fine.
I’m not even sure this counts as a bug as you could say that is a valid interpretation of the syntax. The problem is most of the tools handle the # comment OK, just the ones you tend to use at the end of the development cycle don’t so you can get in a bit of a state. Especially as you get no errors or warnings - it just ignores the files after the comment. As you can guess it took me a while to figure out what was happening.
However a neat feature of QT is that it comes with sources to the libraries and tools. So hey presto I edit the source to say comments don’t end the block and away we go. I think, I’d better check what else my changes might affect!

The moral of the tale? Don’t add comments!

Sorry for the lack of recent scintillating(!) entries. I’ve been writing a pantomime. No really, there was a competition to write a panto, all they wanted was a single scene so I knocked one out (as they say). However, having started I thought I’d carry on so I’m doing that. Now I’ve got a scene and a half (great progress).

What’s this to do with IT? Not a lot but I am using Word and Scriptsmart Gold (macro’s to format scripts with). If anyone wants to tell me a better set of macros or discuss them in general that would give me more of an IT theme…

It has been brought to my notice (by someone who, unlike me, watches the program) that Sir Alan Sugar has been asking his apprentice candidates about their children in relation to their potential job. Isn’t this illegal? I understood that you were not allowed to ask about age, marital status, existing or intended children.

If you think he is OK then please explain to me how that is - otherwise inform the CPS ASAP!