Improving Compiler Error Messages

[Adam D. Ruppe]

On Sun, May 02, 2010 at 08:50:31AM -0400, Michel Fortin wrote:
> 	test.d(4): Error: undefined identifier wrietln, did you mean 
> 	template writeln(T...)?
> 
> It'd be nice if output like that was be a machine readable. This way, 
> an editor could display misspelled words with a red underline and you 
> could automatically use the suggestion by right-clicking and selecting 
> it (just like spell checking in word processing apps, or in Eclipse). 
> But to do that you'd need the column coordinates of the word too... too 
> bad DMD doesn't track this.

You could code up something to do it with the current message. A regexp
along these lines or similar:

undefined identifier ([a-zA-Z0-9_])+, did you mean (.*)?

Then in the given line, do a plain search for $1 and offer to replace it.
Probably not 100% accurate, but I suspect it would be close enough for
most practical purposes.