Re: [PATCH] include error codes in error messages

On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 05:13:28PM -0800, Jack Repenning wrote:
> On Feb 6, 2008, at 1:21 PM, Branko ??ibej wrote:
>
>> Another thing that strikes me is that the whole errror number, e.g. 200011
>> in the example above, is quite and completely useless; because you never
>> *see* that number in the code! You see some constant + 11, so this display
>> is quite useless for searching for the cause.
>
> I think we're looking for "pretty displays that provide the sort of info
> naive users would push into google," more than "information-dense displays
> that the primary committers can do amazing tricks with," aren't we? And
> basically, the naive user is going to paste in the error line, whatever it
> says (or some substring). So why do we need any representation at all of
> the constant offset?

And come to think of it, why do we need a numeric representation at all if
pasting the whole error string into a search engine will yield meaningful
results? Will another numeric identifier really make that much of a
difference for a user looking for the solution to a problem?

I may seem contradictory by saying the above while having posted the patch.
I did the patch mostly as a proof-of-concept of Karl's idea, of which
I was originally convinced as well. But now it turns out that the discussion
the patch has kicked off is already worth more than the patch itself IMHO :)

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