Re: [fortran, patch] Fix handling of printf-style position specifiers of the form "%3$d" in error.c (PR29711)

[Brooks Moses <brooks dot moses at codesourcery dot com>]

Tobias Burnus wrote:
> Example:
>    Error: Symbol '%s' referenced at %L not found in module '%s'
> is then in German
>    Fehler: Bei %2$L referenziertes Symbol »%1$s« nicht im Modul »%3$s«
> gefunden
> (Error: At %L referenced symbol '%s' not found in module '%s')
>
> That is the first and the second argument have swapped position. As one
> is not required to build with native language support, I don't see how
> this could be reliably automatically tested.
>
> Sidenote:
> Actually, I'm not quite sure whether this should be "referenced" or
> "referred"; I think it should be "referred" in this case. At least I get
> his error message for  "use mod, only: nonexisting" and Richard Main wrote:
> "In this particular case, although "referred to" has an awfully similar
> root to "referenced", it isn't the same word and the distinction was
> intentional. It would have said "referenced" if that's what it meant. I
> don't recall why a more clearly different term such as "appears" wasn't
> used; maybe there was a reason. Anyway... by the "normal English
> meaning", the name in an ONLY is referring to something - that's what
> names do."

A valid point.  I agree that, if we use the specific meanings of the 
words that the standard uses, "referred to" is correct here and 
"referenced" is incorrect.  And I think it's probably worth having the 
gfortran error messages use the standard's definitions when possible.

(Note that the appropriate correction is s/referenced/referred to/, not 
just s/referenced/referred/, though.  I would think that's the sort of 
obvious change that probably doesn't need approval, but I'd probably ask 
to be safe anyway.  And it would certainly need a regression check, to 
make sure there aren't test files depending on the current wording.)

- Brooks