rc error messages from scripts

rc error messages from scripts

[Bengt Kleberg]

Greeitngs,

When developing scripts I sometimes get the error message:

line 25: syntax error near '('

Would it be possible to change this? Or is somebody using this information,
and depending upon the layout?

What I would like is
scriptname:25 <and basically anything, say syntax error near '('

The reason for me asking is that I use wily, and wily will automagically
open the file on the right line if the error message looks like the new, suggested format.

Re: rc error messages from scripts

[Decklin Foster]

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/

Re: rc error messages from scripts

[Byron Rakitzis]

> Ah. silly me. How about changing the other messages and leaving
> 'segmentation fault' as a special case (ie, no argv[0])? would you
> welcome such a patch?

Let's see:

	; ash
	$ )
	Syntax error: ")" unexpected
	$ ; csh
	[leica@peanut]$ )
	Too many )'s.
	[leica@peanut]$ exit
	; bash
	bash$ )
	bash: syntax error near unexpected token `)'
	bash$ exit
	; 

Okay, on my own linux machine it seems only bash puts argv[0] in for its
"private" error messages.

You can argue about whether this is right or wrong but I don't see a
compelling reason to make rc do the same thing as bash. As I mentioned
before, I think there is an argument to be made for rc's errors being
unadorned, as the user is in a sense engaging in a "private" conversation
with rc before any forks or execs have happened. Maybe this is stretching
a metaphor a little too far, but that's how I feel about these parser
error messages.

Byron.

Re: rc error messages from scripts

[Decklin Foster]

Byron Rakitzis writes:

> Also: in general, child processes in the foreground do not need to be
> identified by their pid. It's redundant.

Ah. silly me. How about changing the other messages and leaving
'segmentation fault' as a special case (ie, no argv[0])? would you
welcome such a patch?

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

Re: rc error messages from scripts

[Byron Rakitzis]

>scriptname:25

This seems like a really good idea.. and as far as I know Rob spent some
while reworking all the utilities so that the new format error message
could be emitted. No reason why we shouldn't do the same!

Byron.