Bug#292961: g++-3.3: g++ -- vastly uninformative error message

[Greg Kochanski <gpk@kochanski.org>]

Package: g++-3.3
Version: 1:3.3.5-5
Severity: normal


Having been away from C++ for several years, I've now tried
to compile some old (circa 1999) code.
The error message

	geom.c:84: parse error before ',' token

(or a dozen variants of it) are completely useless!
I note that this problem made its appearance in 2000,
and still no one has made a serious attempt to fix
the user interface.  (It seems to be from the gcc2.95 to gcc3.0
transition, related to the requirement for C++ namespaces.)

However, whatever it comes from, and doubtless my code
is incorrect to modern standards as it was written before
namespaces,  that error message is rather useless.

Here's the code:

box c_area(C xform_split &xf, C box& databox0, C box& databox1)
{
 // Next is line 84:
 C box box0inOUTin(parallelogram(inverse(xf.back), databox0).insidebox());
 C box lc(inverse_image(databox1, xf.fwd));
 return intersect(box0inOUTin, lc);
}

Now, that error message doesn't tell me if there is a
problem with the definition of the parallelogram class constructor,
the definition of  class box,   class xform_split,
the function inverse()  (or even which version of inverse!)
or whatever.


Am I the first to bring this up, or are people uninterested
in the useability of g++?
                                                                                                       






-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-2-686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages g++-3.3 depends on:
ii  gcc-3.3                     1:3.3.5-5    The GNU C compiler
ii  gcc-3.3-base                1:3.3.5-5    The GNU Compiler Collection (base 
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-20 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libstdc++5-3.3-dev          1:3.3.5-5    The GNU Standard C++ Library v3 (d

-- no debconf information