Every time when I do a comparison with a negative number, GCC shows me this:
error: stray '\342' in program
if ( -4 < ÔÇô3 ) return 1;
^
compilation terminated due to -Wfatal-errors.
Code:
int main() {
if ( -4 < –3 ) return 1;
return 0;
}
The dash before the number three is a Unicode character that looks like a dash. Delete it, and insert a new dash and you'll be fine.
If you used copy-paste, then beware, as pasted code can contain Unicode characters and that may lead to compilation errors like this.
If you typed it manually into an editor, use a different editor or alter the settings of the editor not to convert standard hyphens into other characters. E.g., Microsoft Word does this conversion, but I hope that you did not write code in Word.
The explanation of the error message:
You saved the file in UTF-8 charset. The altered hyphen you used is saved as three consecutive bytes: 0xE2 0x80 0x93 (hexadecimal values)
g++ parses the file byte by byte. It encounters 0xE2 first, which it considers invalid and outputs error: stray '\342' in program. The 342 is the octal representation of 0xE2. And \342 is valid C++ code, it is the escaped version of 0xE2 character. See C++ escape sequences for details, \nnn means the character represented by the octal nnn number.
