Re: C++ PATCH:

[Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at integrable-solutions dot net>]

Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com> writes:

| >>>>> "Gabriel" == Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr@integrable-solutions.net> writes:
| 
| Mark> (However, I've never had the time or energy to
| Mark> work through the process of implementing the caret approach, which is
| Mark> definitely a lot of work, and would necessarily include working
| Mark> through issues about the GNU standards for error messages, etc.)
| 
| Gabriel> That certainly would require changing many things, e.g. Emacs
| Gabriel> support and like.  That is a reason why I approach this issue
| Gabriel> conservatively.
| 
| I've always assumed that when people talk about the "caret approach"
| they are either talking figuratively, including the idea of "just
| print the column number"; or additively, meaning that the caret is a
| nicety that wouldn't replace printing the file name, line number, and
| column number.
| 
| The reason I bring this up is that, afaics, emacs already understands
| "file:line:column" output, and Per already submitted a patch to have
| gcc generate this.  So whatever work remains is presumably just in the
| front end(s).

I've seen cpplib uses that format for a long time now (I think it was
Neil's work), but I do not seem to see emacs actively take advantage
of it.  What I have in mind when talking about "caret approach" is
something along the line of:

   "b.C", line 3: error: expected an expression
        if (int i = {0})
                    ^

If emacs can position cursors like that, great! (but I don't seem to
see something remote with emacs).  Also, we would need to take into
account that not everybody invokdes the compiler through emacs, e.g.
there are terminals and such.

-- Gaby