That cursed hidden character!

Don't you hate it when you have a file that clearly looks right and yet you seem to still get some vague error message (if you are lucky) The classic problem I have is using TAB's instead of SPACE's for picky programs or compilers. The editor that I swear by is vi. It is on ever unix machine and always works. So I use :set list to see those elusive characters. If you are a "c" programmer then the missing ; or */ is a equally likely problem, however the compiler usually gives some stupid error alerting you to the problem. However, the real problem is when you miss type = for == !!! and the compiler is plenty happy to give you bogus object files. Probably the unix program that is the most temperamental (at least when I am driving) is "make". What a great program and a piece of junk at the same time!