Two thoughts on this error-message thread. 1. It'd be easy to add a flag to trim the number of levels of context you get. It'd mean yet another flag though. 2. Bryan got a rather long chunk of program text. GHC tries to trim the size of program chunks by printing "..." after a certain "depth". But this depth mechanism isn't working well for Bryan's example. This should not be at all hard to fix -- it look as it may be to do with do-notation. Simon | -----Original Message----- | From: glasgow-haskell-users-bounces@haskell.org [mailto:glasgow-haskell-users-bounces@haskell.org] On | Behalf Of Neil Mitchell | Sent: 14 April 2007 11:40 | To: Bryan O'Sullivan | Cc: glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org | Subject: Re: GHC's error messages are too verbose? | | Hi | | > I've long wondered why GHC issues such prolix error messages when it | > runs into a problem. | | I am primarily a Hugs user, compiling and running only with GHC once | the code works, and only if I really need the speed - which is quite | rare. but I've been hacking a project in GHCi recently (requiring | template haskell), and I found the GHC error messages way too verbose. | | > Compilers for other languages seem content with as little as one line of | > output per error (which I am not advocating), or a few lines of source | > with the problem highlighted, but I rarely see more. Hugs also tends | > towards the terse side, but I've never found this to be a problem. | | The most important thing in an error message for me is the line | number. Next I want to see the type of error - syntax, type, instance | etc. Then I want to see just a few lexemes of context so I can find | where to start looking. If after all that I didn't figure out where | the error was, I'd want more context - but I rarely want it with Hugs. | | I much prefer the Hugs error messages, although this may be experience | with Hugs, rather than an issue with GHC. | | Thanks | | Neil | _______________________________________________ | Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list | Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users