Message-ID: From: Bryan Murphy To: "'djgpp AT delorie DOT com'" Subject: Some Advice for Buggy Software Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 12:25:18 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: bulk I've noticed a common trend on this list/newsgroup a lot. People ask for help (including myself) and get a response saying something to the effect of posting the smallest possible code fragment that displays this problem. I can attest to this, with the exception of some nasty template problems I had (which were due to an undefined procedure and not the templates themselves after two months of trying to figure it out), whenever I come across a bug, and attempted to minimize the code, I almost always found the problem in the process and never had to bother asking for help. By eliminating all the unneeded code, you narrow down your view to the point where you can get a much better idea about what is going on and what the problem might possibly. This doesn't work in all cases, but it works often enough that you can save yourselves a lot of time and trouble by doing this before you ask for help. At least, if worse comes to worse, you have the code fragment ready when you post for help and can cut off a day or two because people won't have to wait for you to create the simplified code. Just my $.02. Bryan Murphy (aka Dalroth) Web Developer HCST, Inc. : http://www.hcst.com/ Home Page: http://www.hcst.com/~bryan/