---------------------------------------------------------- Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included. ---------------------------------------------------------- What's With All Those Error Messages?

By Stephen Bucaro

Your software application pops up an error message with some cryptic message like "Unexpected Application Error", "General Protection Fault" or "Illegal Operation". You don't have a clue as to what the message means. Illegal Operation! What did you do wrong?

YOU didn't do anything wrong. Somewhere along the line a programmer did something wrong. In this article, I'm going to give you some insight into those cryptic error messages.

General Protection Fault (GPF)

Each application running on your computer stakes out a 4GB area of memory to park itself and all of it's data. All other applications (including other instances of the same application) are forbidden from using that memory area. If an application tries to store something in another applications memory area - BAM! General Protection Fault!

GPFs can be caused by the operating systems overcomplicated memory management scheme. To understand how complicated that scheme is, realize that your computer may not even have 4GB of memory and hard disk space combined, but you can still run multiple applications that each think they have 4GB of memory to work with. That's real smoke and mirrors!

As complicated as that scheme is, GPFs are rarely caused by the operating system. That's because every operating system uses the same time tested and proven memory management scheme. GPFs are usually caused by an application programmers coding error. Here are some other possible causes of GPFs.

* Bad memory chip * Failing hard disk * Computer overheating

Illegal Operation

This error is not caused by an illegal operation by you. Your application tried to perform an illegal operation. One example of an illegal operation is "divide by zero". Enter a number in your calculator and then divide it by zero. Your calculator will display the message "Error". It's illegal to divide a number by zero.

Somewhere in the applications sequence of operation, a mathematical operation resulted in a value of zero. The programmer didn't test for this before they used the number as the divisor in another mathematical operation. Result, Illegal Operation!

There are many other possible illegal operations. An Illegal Operation error is almost always the result of a programmer's error.

Unexpected Application Error (UAE)

When a programmer creates the code for an application to write to a file, they must first put code to "open" the file. If an application tries to write to a file without opening it first, you get the message "Unexpected Application Error". There are many other possible UAEs. An UAE is almost always the result of a programmers error.

One thing I've learned as a programmer is that users will always find a way to break your program. A programmer designs the application to be used in a logical manner. Users never read the help file. They just start executing menu selections in an irrational manner. The program crashes.

Let's make one thing clear. It is the programmers duty to anticipate every possible way that the user can operate the application, and to code provisions to protect the program and the user from undesirable results. With a large, powerful and complex application this requires an enormous amount of testing and debugging time.

The concept of "beta" software (and most freeware and shareware) is to toss the application out to the public and let them do the testing. For the application developer, this has advantages and disadvantages. Advantage: you get better testing and it's free. Disadvantage: The public doesn't understand "beta" software and the application may get a bad reputation as being buggy.

Nonsensical Error Messages

You accidentally try to save a file to a drive that doesn't exist and you get the error message "Error, choose another color". Nonsense error messages result from the way error messages are coded into a program. For example, an application may have six different places in the code where it opens a file. The programmer can code the error message "File doesn't exist" six times, or the programmer can code a list containing all the error messages used in the application and then reference the message in that list.

The list may contain hundreds of messages. Now, while coding, the programmer needs another error message. The programmer can add an accurate message to the list, or choose to reference an existing message. The lazy programmer chooses to reference an existing message in the list that only vaguely relates to the actual error.

Next time your application pops up some cryptic error message, you now have some idea as to what the message means. Most errors are not caused by something the user did. They are caused by programmers mistakes. You also now know why you sometimes get nonsense error messages. ---------------------------------------------------------- Resource Box: Copyright(C)2003 Bucaro TecHelp. To learn how to maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design a Web site and make money on the Web visit http://bucarotechelp.com To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter Send a blank email to mailto:bucarotechelp-subscribe@topica.com ----------------------------------------------------------