Reading the error message carefully can help you see how the computer misinterpreted what you typed
The details have been changed since they aren’t important but the lesson is the same.
A customer had the following problem with a command-line tool:
I’ve created a taglist but I can’t seem to get it to work with the
track
command. When I ask it to track the taglist, it can’t find it. But if I ask for all my taglists, there it is.C:\> show taglists You have 2 taglists: active (8 tags) closed (6 tags) C:\> track active No such tag "active".
Yes, the track
command isn’t working,
but let’s take a closer look at that error message.
It says no such tag
.
Strange, because you are trying to track a taglist, not a tag.
Shouldn’t the error message be
no such taglist
?
Aha, the problem is that the track
command takes
a list of tags on the command line, not a taglist name.
The error message is correct:
There is no such tag called active
.
Because active
isn’t a tag name;
it’s a taglist name.
C:\> track -taglist active Taglist "active" is now being tracked.
Today’s lesson: Look carefully at what the error message complaining about; it may not be what you expect.
Exercise: Diagnose the following error message, given no information about the program being used beyond what is presented here:
I accidentally made a change (transaction number 12345) to the file XYZ, and I want to back it out. But when I run the backout command, I get an error. Can somebody help me?
C:\> backout 12345 12345 - file not found
0 comments