Article ID: 58559
Article Last Modified on 6/14/2006
APPLIES TO
- Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 Service Pack 5
- Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Visual C++ 1.0 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Visual C++ 1.51
- Microsoft Visual C++ 1.5 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Visual C++ 1.0 Professional Edition
This article was previously published under Q58559
SYMPTOMS
In Microsoft C, compiler errors C2143 and C2144 are defined as follows:
CAUSE
You may receive this error message if your program places executable code before a data declaration, an acceptable practice in Kernighan-and-Ritchie C. This practice has been outlawed in later versions of the ANSI drafts.
This error message will normally occur if a required closing curly brace (}), right parenthesis [)], or semicolon (;) is missing.
RESOLUTION
Placing all data declarations before all executable code corrects the programming error.
void main( ) { int i; printf( "Hello world!\n" ); { int j; } }
Note In the C++ language, it is legal to declare data within a block of executable code.
MORE INFORMATION
Sample code
The following code demonstrates this error message.
/* Compile options needed: none */ #include <stdio.h> void main(void) { int i; printf("Hello World\n"); int j; }
Compiling this code with a version of Microsoft C prior to C/C++ 7.0 will return the following error message:
C/C++ version 7.0 and Visual C/C++ issue the following error:
Additional query words: 8.00 8.00c 9.00 9.10
Keywords: kberrmsg kbtshoot kbvc152fix kbprb kbcompiler KB58559