When Andy G opened up libsymblogy.h (sic), he was relieved. Finally, some documentation! Of course, upon further inspection, Andy realized that the comments didn’t quite explain how the code works, how it interfaces with other modules, or even why it uses certain magic numbers like -13. Instead, every function had a comment just as hyperverbose and vapid as this… 

// Description: Implementation of a C function having the special purpose of
// initializing three particular ex	ternal structure elements with arrays of
// stored values which define all symbol modifiers for a corresponding symbology
// datatype, i.e., airborne, land and naval platforms, sensors/emitters, etc.
// The function's input parameters represent the location of the stored data and
// the type of symbology the instructor/operator desires to view. The function
// operates on the presumption that these parameters are valid. The function
// first opens the stored data file and clears the appropriate symbol modifier
// structure depending on the given datatype.  Then the function populates three
// lookup tables with 1) stored indices destined for use as symbol modifiers,
// 2) stored ASCII representations of each symbol modifier row, and 3) stored
// ASCII representations of each symbol modifier column. The function's output
// parameters represent the filename, section, record and datum which was last
// read from the symbology datafile, if any. The function returns a byte
// value 0 when the desired symbol modifiers are successfully initialized.
// Otherwise, the function returns a byte value -13 if the symbology datafile
// doesn't contain the symbol modifier data

Perhaps the -13 is just another way of saying that he has bad luck?

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