[waqf]

I'm not convinced that this is necessarily caused by people losing attention while they write the last line due to anticipation of finishing the task. Other possible theories I can think of:

* People make mistakes in any line, but they often unconsciously review them and spot the mistake while they're writing the next line. In the case of the last line there's no such automatic review.

* (plausible in some of the examples, not all of them) The last line was added by copy–paste at a later date than all the others.

[ddebernardy]

> * People make mistakes in any line, but they often unconsciously review them and spot the mistake while they're writing the next line.

I came in to say something similar. I've lost count of the number of times I did that myself.

That said, the automatic review and error spotting invariably prompts me to review the entire thing with greater attention once done with the whole. So the reason the last line doesn't get a proper review may also turn out to be the lack of hard deadline (I've been blessed by seldom having one).

[nhebb]

Good points. One more:

* Getting interrupted partway through the edits. I call this the "working out of your home office when you have kids" error.

Now, I don't copy-paste-edit similar lines anymore. I find that editing is often slower than typing the line from scratch.

[euank]

I think that's a function of text editor or workflow often.

A vim user that makes heavy use of recording and/or search-replace will be able to do large copy-paste-edits very quickly.

In fact, I think this might be another potential source of error. Depending on how the recording is done, or how an edit is scripted, it's very likely that the first and last lines are the two special cases. The first line, however, will be given the most scrutiny. This leaves another potential source of "last-line" errors; the use of editor features that make such a line the exception.

[Teckla]

Getting interrupted partway through the edits. I call this the "working out of your home office when you have kids" error.

I'm interrupted by my boss far, far more often than I'm interrupted by my kid. A dozen times a day isn't unusual.

[jamesrom]

I agree, although I will say this happened to me yesterday, and I'm certain it was due to the anticipation of finishing the task.

[bmm6o]

Some of the examples were probably written all at once, but in some examples the last case was probably added some time later. The pattern followed by the previous cases was no longer fresh in the mind, and a mistake was made.