"Invalid character literal" on compile

Bug Reports
1

It seems I am getting Invalid character literalwhen compiling my code sometimes. It failes on the first ein WriteLine, which is very weird. Earlier I got in on the l in another function, can’t remember which right now.

System.Console.WriteLine('value');
2

Hi Jo Emil,

'' is for characters, "" is for strings. So you need to change 'value' to "value" in this case.

(Also, you want debug_log, instead of System.Console.WriteLine, but we discussed that in another channel already.)

3

Ah, that makes sense. Though, quite weird that the error pointed out what looked like random places in the syntax.

4

Can you post a full example where the error is reported to be in the wrong place? I just tried

  1 using Uno;
  2
  3 namespace SourceOff
  4 {
  5     public class App : Application
  6     {
  7         void f()
  8         {
  9             System.Console.WriteLine('value');
 10         }
 11     }
 12 }

And it reports the error to be at App.uno(9,38):, which is the beginning of value.

5 
using Uno;
using Fuse;
using Fuse.Resources;
using Fuse.Triggers;
using Fuse.Controls;
using Fuse.Gestures;
using Uno.Data.Json;

public partial class MainView
{
    public MainView()
    {
        InitializeUX();

        var json = JsonReader.Parse(import BundleFile("Assets/pricelist.json").ReadAllText());

        for (int i = 0; i < json["services"].Count; i++) {
            var obj = json["services"][i];

            debug_log foo["title"].AsString();
        }

        System.Console.WriteLine('value');
    }
}

This gave me the error at 23:28, which would be the first e in WriteLine.

6

It seems this issue is due to how Sublime Text uses “Column” when you use tabs for indentation. If you have <tab>x in Sublime, it will report x as being in column 5, even though it is actually in colum 2 in the document (which is what other editors like vim and Emacs correctly display).

The fact that it is displayed in column 5 is just an artifact of the tabSize setting in sublime. There is no way for the compiler to know this, so I’m afraid it’s hard to compensate for.

The only workaround I can think of is to use spaces for indentation instead of tabs, which you can do using the translateTabsToSpaces setting in Sublime.

7

Ah, that makes sense :slight_smile:

Thanks!