compiler mystery...weird

[ModShop]

I was trying to compile a very basic test program that was less than 170 lines of code. I kept getting "Expected unqualified id before "if"" errors. I went through my code multiple times and retyped a good portion of it, but to no avail. I took out my comments from the problem function...and it compiled and worked fine! I wrote a comment back in, and it game me errors! The comments were on their own lines, separate from code lines. Also, during my testing, I commented out a simple line of code (x+=5;), but it still tried to compile it. It gave an error on a line that was all comment, no code. I have never seen this before. Anyone else run into this or have any ideas as to why this happened?

[Disch]

Compilers don't spit errors for no reason. You had something wrong with your code.

Can you post a small program that reproduces the error message?

[ultifinitus]

In my experience this kind of thing happened when I tried to recompile my code without saving the files, are you saving your files before compiling?

[ModShop]

My IDE automatically saves the files before compilation. I'm not sure if this will reproduce the
message, but my code looked something like this:

if (dir==1){
x+=4;
y+=4;}
//lots of these with the occasional "//****************************\\" to help with readability
//when I took out the dividing comments, it compiled fine 

[Bazzy]

A backslash followed by a newline causes the compiler to ignore the newline.
So

// comment \\
hello

Is the same as
// comment \hello

[ultifinitus]

\(0.o)/ __ \(o.0)/

I didn't know escape sequences were valid in comments, didn't even know there was a newline escape sequence....
learn something new every day...

[Bazzy]

That is actually done even before preprocessing.
That's why you can do this:

#define foo bar ( x, \
 y, z )  

And this:

string S = "foo\
bar";

[rocketboy9000]

I prefer:

string s="foo"
"bar";

This uses the char constant concatenation step.

[ModShop]

Hmm, didn't know that forward slashes did that. That explains everything! lol