No symbol table?

[alanmead]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but when I make some mistakes in authoring TADS 2 games, particularly with the arguments to verX, doX, and ioX functions, I get the error below. This can be replicated by simply adding an arbitrary extra parameter to any verification method. Then compile and play the game and cause the method to fire.

I assume that the symbol table would provide more clues to debug this issue? Like the function name, at least?

[TADS-1026: wrong number of arguments to user function "<NO SYMBOL TABLE>.<NO SYMBOL TABLE>"]

Is this because I have failed to include debugging information? I have tried compiling with -ds and -ds2, am I doing it wrong?

tadsc -ds2+ file.t
tadsc -ds+ file.t
tadsc -ds2 file.t
tadsc -ds file.t

This issue is identical in a copy of tadsc/frob that I compiled in 2014 and 2.0 that I compiled today. I see it affects some other users: http://www.allthingsjacq.com/intfic_clubfloyd_20090103.html

[realnc]

Sorry for the huge delay.

It's worse than I thought. On Windows, running this:

#include <adv.t>
#include <std.t>

startroom: room
    sdesc = "room"
    ldesc = "room. "
;

foo: item
    sdesc = "item"
    noun = 'item'
    location = startroom
    doTake( actor, foo ) =
    {
        die();
    }
;

results in a Workbench crash when trying to TAKE ITEM:

[alanmead]

After I logged this issue, I did a little more digging. I think there was originally a TADS debugger and I think MKR dropped it and I assumed that it would be a lot of work.

But I haven't even attempted to look at the frob source or investigate further. I think it would be easier for me to write a Perl script to parse the TADS source and find these errors (this specific error of the wrong number of parameters), than to address than in frob.

[realnc]

Well, there's also the solution of ignoring this kind of error by compiling the game with -Za. Probably not wise, but it's an option.