Tangential to the main point:

The OP just learned a valuable lesson in what computers actually do. The single char oops is usually programmers' first insight into what it really means when we say "computers do exactly what they are told nothing more or less". This is one of those things we all have had frustrate us to no end. Similar mistakes abound, and are one of the those things that cause a lot of people to give up on the programming thing all together. Here's a real kicker about it: they don't stop with experience, we just get better at noticing them faster.

For example about 2 years ago -- 5 years into a programming career and 12 years into programming in general, I had this code give me trouble:

   // C Code:
   if (test_fails)
     do_crashy_thing();

So I decided to throw a quick printf in there (the situation was such that learning the debugging tools available to me would take a couple weeks, so printf was my quick solution here). I should note that I hade been working heavily in python for the preceding 3 months. My code looked like this now:

   // C Code:
   if (test_fails)
     log("info about test");
     do_crashy_thing();

Which caused my code to crash every time instead of sometimes. C coders will know that multi-statement conditionals need to be wrapped in { } but single statement ones don't. Further python if statements are indent scoped. The recent python work sort of made me blind to the problem in the code. After 3 days of WTFing, talking to the rubber duck, and so on, I called over a colleague and he pointed out the mistake in something like 40 seconds. A younger me would have been embarrased, but this just happens in programming.

My point is: these things happen, and I'm glad to see a blog post about this, without the demoralization that normally comes with it. I think it should be more openly discussed in tutorials and other newb oriented posts.

A few tips for anyone who is experiencing this sort of thing and not sure what to do:

Get a rubber duck (or whatever) and start employing the rubber-duck debugging technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging it really helps!

Be willing to include colleagues early and often. Experienced programmers understand and won't think less of you. Doubly so if you are new. (The will tease you a bit about it, but in that shared experienced bonding way, not in the "mock the outsider" way).

Realize that as you are chasing the bug by getting down and dirty with other bits of the program, you aren't wasting time, you are most likely fixing other bugs that would have otherwise just manifested later anyway.