Misleading error message of the day

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:10:17 +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:

> On 2011-12-08, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
>> On Thursday, December 8, 2011 10:03:38 AM UTC-5, Jean-Michel Pichavant
>> wrote:
>>> string are iterable, considering this, the error is correct.
>>
>> Yes, I understand that the exception is correct.  I'm not saying the
>> exception should be changed, just that we have the opportunity to
>> produce a more useful error message.  The exception would be equally
>> correct if it was:
>>
>> ValueError: you did something wrong
> 
> My favorite is still the old classic error from and old Unix printer
> port driver:
> 
>   "lp0 on fire"
> 
>> but most people would probably agree that it's not the most useful
>> message that could have been produced.

I forget where I saw this, but somebody took a screen shot of an error 
message from a GUI application that said something like:

A fatal error occurred: no error

and then aborted the app.


-- 
Steven