Dumb Problems Contest!

[Curt Carpenter]

Getting toward the new year, so I invite everyone to submit their "Dumbest Debug Problem of the Year" -- something that took a ridiculous amount of time to figure out, and turned out to be really dumb. 

I'll go first.

I spent a day trying to figure out why my statement

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. CopyToSymbDel(s,',')
2.  

in the StrUtils unit just would not compile despite multiple readings of the docs, examination of the source,  building a minimal test program for the statement, and finally asking for help here on the forum.

After a frustrating day, I finally realized that the correct statement is

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. Copy2SymbDel(s,',').
2.  

My brain just would not accept the "2" instead of the "to" no matter how many times I read it or typed it    (Pretty sure this sort of problem gets worse with age too!)

[Bart]

Just stared appr. 15 minutes at a compiler error stating: "; expected, but else found".
That piece of code looked like:

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1.       ...
2.     end;//case
3.   end//some condition
4.   else
5.   begin
6.     ...

To satisfy the compiler I (desperately, and knowing this could not be OK) I added the requested semicolon before the "else".
Same errormessage.

In the end it turned out to be a misplaced "if condition then":

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1.   begin
2.     if condition then
3.      case something of

where it should have been

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1.   if condition then
2.   begin
3.     case something of

All this an a function spanning 3 or more screens with several "if then else if" and case statements.

Bart

[Thaddy]

Worst I have seen in the past year is screwing up exitproc management:

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. {$mode delphi}{$H+}// needs 3.3.1
2. procedure ScrewUp;
3. begin
4.   writeln('Happy holidays')
5. end;
6.  
7. begin
8.   AddExitProc(procedure begin writeln(', world');end);
9.   AddExitProc(procedure begin write('Hello');end);
10.   // please kill the exitproc chain...<sigh>
11.   ExitProc := @ScrewUp; //<---WTF
12. end.

Thank you for wasting my time, Culprit...You know who you are.

(Well at least this does not print the dreaded one.. but it also causes leaks)