> On Thu, 28 Nov 2019 at 21:08, Stephen Leake <
address@hidden> wrote:
> > The most common error I get is "file not found" because
> > PATH is wrong or the file is not installed, when it's perfectly clear
> > that the system knows the name of the file it's looking for, but _I_
> > don't, and it's not telling me! _very_ frustrating; Gnu/Linux is much
> > better here. So I assume that's the error message GetLastError will
> > return here.
> On Fri, 29 Nov 2019 at 07:17, Eli Zaretskii <
address@hidden> wrote:
> > From: Richard Copley <
address@hidden>
>
> > GetLastError() is just an integer, like errno. You must have to do a little more work to get descriptive errors
> > from other systems? There's probably an equivalent. The Application error log in Event Viewer springs to
> > mind.
>
> I usually do from the shell prompt:
>
> net helpmsg NNN
>
> where NNN is the code returned by GetLastError. (Programmatically,
> there's the FormatMessage function to return the error string.)
> Example:
>
> D:\usr\eli>net helpmsg 2
>
> The system cannot find the file specified.
>
On GNU/Linux, the strerror family of functions can be used to format an error message. I'd demonstrate, but it would be patronising and beside the point.
You've brought us back to the error message Stephe complained about in the first place. I quoted him in the email you replied to. He complained that the message doesn't include the name of the file that was not found. He remarked "Gnu/Linux is much better here". I wondered how.
> > ("Dependencies" gets detailed information somehow. But for all I know (I haven't looked) it emulates the
> > loader to see what happens.)
>
> You can do the same with objdump, btw.
I'll leave the conversation here. It's not going anywhere.