An AVR Programming Tip

I've encountered avr-gcc / Arduino IDE compiler errors like this a couple of times in the last few weeks:

error: variable or field 'delobj' declared void In function 'void camReadPicture(boolean, boolean)':
 In function 'void wireInit(char)':
 In function 'void recvByteHandler(int)':
 In function 'void sendByteHandler()':
Bad error line: -11

A negative line number?  One possibility: check your comments at the top of the file for extraneous characters ... here's what I found in a program I was tweaking. Note the letter 'd' that shouldn't be there.

d/**
 * @file       main.c
 * @brief      MAIN for the gameboy camera interface for AT90S4433
 *
 * @author     Laurent Saint-Marcel
 * @date       2005/07/05