Understanding compile errors due to copying code from a doc file and not a txt file

Question

SITUATION:

My instructor for my micro-controller class refuses to save sample code to a text file and instead saves it to a word document file instead. When I open up the doc file and copy/paste the code into my IDE "CodeWarrior" it causes errors upon compile time.

I am having to rewrite all the code into a text editor and then copy/paste it into my IDE.

MY UNDERSTANDING:

I was told to always save code as a text file because when you save code as a word document file it will bring in unwanted characters when your copy/pasting the code into your IDE for compiling.

MY QUESTIONS TO YOU:

1.)

Can someone explain this dilemma to me so I can understand it better? I would like to present a better case next time when I receive errors and to also know more about what is happening.

2.)

Is it possible to write a script that will show me all the characters that are being copied and pasted into a file when the code is coming from a word document vs. a text file? In otherwords is there a program that will allow me to see what is going on between copying/pasting code from a word doc file versus a txt file?

Answer 1

Saving source code as a Word document is just silly. If your instructor is insisting on this, chances are no matter how well-reasoned and thorough your argument, they're not going to listen. They're beyond help.

However, to answer your questions: 1) It depends on what you're pasting the thing into. Programs that copy onto the clipboard usually make the data available in several different formats, ranging from their own internal format to plain ASCII text, to maximize compatibility so that the data can be pasted into pretty much any target program. Most text editors will only accept the plan-text version, in which case no extra characters should be transferred. However if your text editor supports RTF or HTML, this may not be true. I'm not sure what CodeWarrior supports but it is certainly possible.

A workaround if this is the case: First paste into a PURE text editor like Notepad. Then copy from Notepad into CodeWarrior. This should eliminate any hidden formatting. As shoover said above, make sure double-quotes " are really double-quotes and not the fancy left- and right-specific quotes that Word sometimes uses.

2. Use a hex editor like XVI32 to see the raw contents of the file, including nonprinting characters. Or use a text editor with support for showing nonprinting characters (vi/vim, etc.).

Answer 2

I'm studying C and I've just had the same problem. When coping a piece of code from a PDF file and trying to compiling it, gcc would return a serie of errors. Reading the answer above I had an idea: "What if I converted the utf8 into ascii?". Well, I found a website that does just that (https://onlineutf8tools.com/convert-utf8-to-ascii). But instead of also converting the utf8 characters into ascii, it showed them as hexadecimals (Copying from the website to the text editor you can see it better). From there i realised that the problem were mostly the quote marks "". I then copied the ascii "translation" into my code editor (I must add that it worked fine with Sublime, while VScode read the same utf8 code as it was in the original file, even after cp from the website) and replaced all the hex with the actual ascii characters that were needed to compile the code properly. I used the function find and replace from my editor to do it. I must say that it wasn't very fast doing it. But I believe that in some cases, if the code you're trying to copying is too long, doing it the way I've just described could be faster than rewriting the entire code.