[Bug c/85664] Don't ask questions if tere's no way to answer
https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=85664 --- Comment #4 from Mysha --- > The suggestions are eminently useful... Which is why I said I would prefer to have a --terse option. After all, having such an option implies that you can choose not to use them. > If you don't like getting too many errors or verbose output, you can use > -fmax-errors=1 -fno-diagnostics-show-caret -fno-diagnostics-show-option. ... Great. It turns out the impression I got from the reactions to the two reports, that there was no option to be terse, was mistaken. My trust in GCC is restored. Thank you. (You know why I didn't know.) > ... we have also bug reports asking for messages to be more verbose. ..." It's OK to feel attacked. It's the same I feel for getting a reply about something I didn't say, on a topic that wasn't even the focus of the report. I wrote I would have "--terse" (or words to that effect), and only because I understood that these informative extras were the only way, currently. I did not write "I want GCC to be different for everybody because something the developers considered a good thing doesn't always suit my particular situation." Right, we've now both defended ourselves. Let's continue on what I did write. (And if you happen to be part of the European Youth Music Festival, let me know where you are and we'll have a drink together.) > Removing the questions do not save lines. Indeed, which is why these two reports are related, but not duplicates.
[Bug c/85664] Don't ask questions if tere's no way to answer
https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=85664
--- Comment #2 from Mysha ---
Well, Jonathan Wakely, I hear there's not enough love to go round.
But other than that: Yes, that is indeed one case of the compiler asking a
question where it shouldn't. And I like the approach of replacing it with
something like:
#include defines std::foo.
Indeed, I do have the impression that messages aren't as terse as they used to
be. Informative, but not really terse. And this would seem a nice short
alternative.
Another one case is the result from compiling program test.c:
inf main(){}
"
test.c:1:1: error: unknown type name ‘inf’; did you mean ‘int’?
inf main(){}
^~~
int
"
I don't know how many more unanswerable questions there are in GCC, but
reactions suggest that these informative messages with questions are not an
option, but rather the normal output. In that case, I'd rather have --terse;
just the error messages, not the informative additions. (I get a lot of these,
and with four lines per error I run our of console lines after some 17 typos.)
But for the direct case: While the other one also would like to see the wording
changed, that one is about the verbosity; what I'm after are the questions. If
there's no checksum in those files, I figure I can just hexedit them, but I'd
prefer a proper solution to that.
Bye
Mysha
[Bug c/85664] New: Don't ask questions if tere's no way to answer
https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=85664 Bug ID: 85664 Summary: Don't ask questions if tere's no way to answer Product: gcc Version: 7.3.0 Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: normal Priority: P3 Component: c Assignee: unassigned at gcc dot gnu.org Reporter: gcc at mailed dot e4ward.com Target Milestone: --- (gcc (Ubuntu 7.3.0-16ubuntu3) 7.3.0) How is the weather today? All readers who are now irritated that they can't very well go and react to a bug report solely to write about the weather, will realise that I should not have asked about the weather somewhere where the reader can't answer me. This is a standard for any publication: Don't ask the audience a question if they have no way to reply. Yet, every time I mistype a name - which with my co-ordination is a rather frequent occurrence - GCC will now ask me: "; did you mean ‘’?". I find offering an alternative an interesting concept. I haven't even looked up yet how to switch it off as it's usually correct. (I do get the impression the guesses are about the fairly obvious, which is when they are fairly obvious to me as well, suggesting this doesn't add much.) But they are suggestions, not questions. A development environment can ask question i this situation because, when the user replies by activating the confirm function, it can actually modify the code it's holding. A stand-alone compiler should not ask questions. Could this please be reworded? Bye, Mysha
