Your right it's still not standard even in the EMCAScript 2016, it just seems to be the commonality. When thinking java yes line only makes sense as typically one who writes java does not minify the code. When thinking javascript however minified code is quite normal and myfile:1 might mean 5000 other lines as well.
I looked into the source some to see if it actually is feasible to build my own stacktrace with file:line:column, however in the current state it seems impossible! Nashorn actually uses java.lang.Throwable.getStackTrace() to get the stack and that ends up being native. The only place you can get the columnNumber is for the specific location the error was thrown. Keyword "thrown". If you noticed my previous sample new Error().columnNumber === -1 since columnNumber is not populated... however if you throw & catch then... try { throw new Error(); } catch(e) { /* e.columnNumber === 6 */ } In my case with console.count(), the need for columnNumber is not the location of new Error() either, since the console.count() function would need the callers file:line:col as that is where console.count() is called from. In the end I still think if the stack element is from a script it should include the column number like node.js, ff, edge all seem to be doing. Since a line only is useless when the script is minified. However considering that nashorn is not providing the stackTrace directly, I could see why the team may not want to include the columnNumber. If you do however know of another way to get the callers file:line:col please let me know. My second thought was to check arguments.callee.caller for that info but no dice. -Arthur Fiedler We do not aim to provide complete compatibility with other JS > implementations on the non-standard properties such as "stack". stack > tries to mimic whatever is done for Java code (no column number for > eg.). But, as you've noted there are enough information on Error objects > via other properties like lineNumber, columnNumber, fileName. It should > be possible to write a simple utility function to format stack string as > desired for specific applications. > > Thanks, > -Sundar >