All My Rails Apps Died Over the Holidays

Rails
1

I have several Rails (version 1.0) apps I’m working on on a Win XP box
using Webrick that were working fine before I left for the holidays. I
came back, started up and they all get the same syntax and compile
errors:

compile error
./script/…/config/…/app/views/time/list.rhtml:4: Invalid char `\212’
in expression

repeated over and over. Refreshing the page gives thes same error but
for seemingly random parts in the rhtml files.

The application trace is:
#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/views/time/list.rhtml:4:in module_eval' -e:3:inload’
-e:3

I tried reinstalling Ruby and rebooting and doing a gem update, but
nothing seems to affect it. Any suggestions?

2

Stupid question, but best to get it out of the way: out of hard drive
space?

–
Alex

3

Marcus V. wrote:

for seemingly random parts in the rhtml files.

The application trace is:
#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/views/time/list.rhtml:4:in module_eval' -e:3:inload’
-e:3

I tried reinstalling Ruby and rebooting and doing a gem update, but
nothing seems to affect it. Any suggestions?

You did not copy any code from a browser lately…?
I had this problem when i pasted code from blogs with quotes like´some
text` instead of ‘some text’

// JoNtE

4

Alex Y. wrote:

Stupid question, but best to get it out of the way: out of hard drive
space?

No, still three and a half gigs left on the 'ole hard drive.

And no, haven’t pasted anything from the web. In any case, this is
happening on 4 different apps, all of them were working fine before.

I’m also getting this line at the bottom of the errors:
_erbout.concat "

Description\n"

Seems to be related to the the other errors and it also changes when I
refresh the page to other random lines in my RHTML files.

5

On Jan 10, 2006, at 8:21 AM, Marcus V. wrote:

I’m also getting this line at the bottom of the errors:
_erbout.concat " Description\n"

Seems to be related to the the other errors and it also changes when I
refresh the page to other random lines in my RHTML files.

A friend of mine (Troy Heninger) reported something very similar to
this when trying to run Family Connection on his Windows machine.
Here’s the error messages he was getting:

SyntaxError in Administrator#setup

Showing app/views/layouts/application.rhtml where line #10 raised:

compile error
./script/…/config/…/app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:10: Invalid
char \002' in expression ./script/../config/../app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:11: Invalid char \003’ in expression
./script/…/config/…/app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:13: Invalid
char \002' in expression ./script/../config/../app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:16: Invalid char \003’ in expression
./script/…/config/…/app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:31: Invalid
char \020' in expression ./script/../config/../app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:31: Invalid char \002’ in expression
./script/…/config/…/app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:32: parse
error, unexpected tINTEGER, expecting kEND
_erbout.concat " <div class="messagebox">\n"0/
^
./script/…/config/…/app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:33: parse
error, unexpected tSTRING_BEG, expecting kEND
_erbout.concat " "t.; if flash[:notice] ; _erbout.concat “<p
style="color: green">”; _erbout.concat(( flash[:notice] ).to_s);
_erbout.concat “

”; end ; _erbout.concat “\n”
^
./script/…/config/…/app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:33: parse
error, unexpected tIDENTIFIER, expecting kEND
_erbout.concat " "t.; if flash[:notice] ; _erbout.concat “<p
style="color: green">”; _erbout.concat(( flash[:notice] ).to_s);
_erbout.concat “

”; end ; _erbout.concat “\n”
^
./script/…/config/…/app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:34: parse
error, unexpected tIDENTIFIER, expecting kEND
_erbout.concat " "s; if flash[:error] ; _erbout.concat “<p style=
"color: red">”; _erbout.concat(( flash[:error] ).to_s);
_erbout.concat “

”; end ; _erbout.concat “\n”
^
./script/…/config/…/app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:34: Invalid
char \002' in expression ./script/../config/../app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:35: parse error, unexpected tIDENTIFIER, expecting kEND ./script/../config/../app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:36: parse error, unexpected tINTEGER, expecting kEND _erbout.concat " "8; end ^ ./script/../config/../app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:36: Invalid char \002’ in expression

Extracted source (around line #10):

7:
8:
9:
10: <%= stylesheet_link_tag “application” %>
11: <%= stylesheet_auto_link_tags %>
12:
13: <%= javascript_include_tag ‘prototype’ %>

Trace of template inclusion: /app/views/layouts/application.rhtml

RAILS_ROOT: ./script/…/config/…

Application Trace | Framework Trace | Full Trace
#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:41:in
compile_template' #{RAILS_ROOT}/app/controllers/administrator_controller.rb:28:in setup’

He couldn’t seem to track down the problem at the time, however. He
used subversion to get the code, so it wasn’t a cut-and-paste issue.
Perhaps he’s made further progress?

Duane J.
(canadaduane)
http://blog.inquirylabs.com/

6

He couldn’t seem to track down the problem at the time, however. He
used subversion to get the code, so it wasn’t a cut-and-paste issue.
Perhaps he’s made further progress?

Duane J.
(canadaduane)
http://blog.inquirylabs.com/

Definitely looks like he was having the same problem I’m having, and
come to think of it, the last thing I did was try to install Family
Connection (unsuccessfully). I wonder if something that I did then has
broken everything. Hmmm.

7

Marcus V. wrote:

He couldn’t seem to track down the problem at the time, however. He
used subversion to get the code, so it wasn’t a cut-and-paste issue.
Perhaps he’s made further progress?

Duane J.
(canadaduane)
http://blog.inquirylabs.com/

Definitely looks like he was having the same problem I’m having, and
come to think of it, the last thing I did was try to install Family
Connection (unsuccessfully). I wonder if something that I did then has
broken everything. Hmmm.

Yeah… this is what it ended up being. In my effort to install Family
Connection, I put a file called mysql.so that I found online to get the
ruby/mysql bindings to work in
C:\ruby\lib\ruby\site_ruby\1.8\i386-msvcrt

Removing it and restarting my applications solved the problem.
Strange… but it works now.

This isn’t where I got the file, but this looks like it might have the
right way to get the ruby mysql bindings installed if anyone is curious:
http://seagecko.org/thoughts/in-the-past/2004/09/09/ruby-mysql-and-windows/

8

Maybe encoding problem. I find that for some files when saved in utf-8,
ruby
will report ‘invalid char’. These hidden chars are invisible in editor.