No, no, no, no, no! If no one ever needs to look at it then why are you logging it at all? If someone is going to look at it then it will probably be because something has gone wrong and then every-thing you do to make it easier for the person doing the fault finding is appreciated and reflects well on you as a developer. Say what you detected and be explicit, say why it means you can't continue and say when it happened. Remember no matter how obscure the log when something is wrong someone will look at it and be trying to make sense of it.

My three top gripes with developers-

• programs that detect an error condition and die without reporting the error condition any-where
• log files without date-time stamps (I kid you not) or date-time stamps that are inconsistant or unreadable
• meaningless or un-helpfull error messages like- "an error has occurred", "software error", "terminating due to an abnormal condition", "error-20756a" etc.

By avoiding these you make it easier to locate the source of the problem, easier to give quality bug reports and easier to represent you well to the client because you have made me feel in control of the problem: I have an idea what is going on and I can convey that confidently to the client- even if I have no idea how to fix it.

</end rant> :)

--
Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is. -Margaret Mitchell

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