Re: rc error messages from scripts

[Decklin Foster <fosterd@hartwick.edu>]

Bengt Kleberg writes:

> When developing scripts I sometimes get the error message:
> line 25: syntax error near '('

I agree this is annoying. Equally annoying is this:

; )
syntax error
; mbogo
mbogo not found

I want it to print "rc: syntax error" (or better yet, "syntax error
near ')'"). In general, the UNIX custom for these things is that the
basename of argv[0] should be printed before the error. (Unless it's
set to '-rc' for a login shell, in which case we should change it to
'rc'.)

I note that bash handles segfaults as a special case, and just prints
"Segmentation fault". I'd be more inclined to go for consistency and
use "rc: segmentation fault". But might that cause people to think rc
was segfaulting? Perhaps, "rc: segmentation fault in child proccess
1234". How's that?

I'll volunteer to do the work for this, as long as Tim thinks it's a
good idea.

-- 
Decklin
Written with Debian GNU/Linux - http://www.debian.org/