Icon Description
Usually we used to have spaces after semi columns. Since C++ ignore whitespace, its not a problem. But in Visual C++ 6.0 that is not the case always. If you put spaces after the backslash delimiter(\), it will become one of the worst bugs that you encounter.

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Usually we use backslash delimiter to concatenate lines – mostly while writing macros. See the following macro.

#define INCREMENT_AND_DECREMENT( Value ) \
    Value = Value + 1; \ » » »
    Value = Value - 1;

In the macro, instead of » char, put some tab or space and then compile. You will get a strange error as follows.

error C2501: 'Value' : missing storage-class or type specifiers

Icon How Can I Do It?
One of the defensive mechanism is – always enable “View whitespace” by pressing Ctrl+Shift+8. So take care next time and don’t spend hrs on these silly bugs as I did years before.


Note that its just a implementation behavior in Visual C++ 6.0 and may not found in other compilers or upcoming Visual C++ versions.

Thanks to Hemant for pointing out my implicit biasing towards VisualStudio 6.0. I forgot to specify that its just a Visual studio behavior.

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Targeted Audience – Intermediate.