Re: Debugging of dynamocally defined functions

[Peter Stephenson <pws@csr.com>]

Sven Wischnowsky wrote:
> Hm, could we change it so that it saves the line number of the script or
> surrounding function?

What does the principle of least surprise give here?  Here's the current
behaviour.

  % cat fn
  print fn has now been executed.  Ecky thump.
  
  fn2() {                
  print $LINENO  
  }
  % autoload fn
  % fn
  fn has now been executed.  Ecky thump.
  % fn2
  1

(remember that the `fn2() {' line is numbered zero).

If you used the file it was in, you would get a line number of 4 in a 1
line function, together (with xtrace) with the name of that function.  What
you really want to know, I suppose, is the name of the function, the name
of the file it was read from, and the line number in that file.  That could
probably be arranged.  But it does mean an increased number of special
cases --- are we autoloading or running a dot file, if so, are we defining
a function which is not the one we are autoloading --- so it's not that
simple.

Alternatively, we forget about using line numbers on input and define them
when parsing, so they relate to the `which' output.  That's a big change,
and probably less useful since it's the original file you're going to be
editing.  I don't think it's worth remembering both.

By the way, you can use the trick of

  eval "$(which compdef)"

to sync the line numbers with the which output.  At least I hope so --- if
this goes screwy there's a bug in text.c.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@csr.com>                  Software Engineer
CSR Ltd., Unit 300, Science Park, Milton Road,
Cambridge, CB4 0XL, UK                          Tel: +44 (0)1223 392070


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