ErrorLineNumber.jl

Address line number bug in Julia 0.4 error reporting
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Updated Last
9 Years Ago
Started In
October 2015

ErrorLineNumber package

The purpose of this package to address one or more unfixed bugs in Julia 0.4 that cause the run-time error system to report the location of the error at the wrong source-file line number in some cases. Suppose a source file has a function reduceMatrix that generates an BoundsError due to an array subscript out of range. Suppose you suspect that Julia displays the wrong line number for the error. This package instruments a source file with a second scheme for tracking line numbers. To use it, first install the package via:

Pkg.clone("https://github.com/StephenVavasis/ErrorLineNumber.jl")

and then declare:

using ErrorLineNumber.@errorlinenumber

somewhere at the beginning of your source file. Next replace your function declaration, e.g.,:

function reduceMatrix(a::Array{Float64,2}, i::Int)
. . .
end

by:

@errorlinenumber function reduceMatrix(a::Array{Float64,2}, i::Int)
. . .
end

and re-run the code. The macro will cause the line with the error message to be displayed, encased with rows of exclamation points, before the Julia backtrace error message.

The additional statements for instrumentation degrade performance, so once the debugging is finished, the macro call @errorlinenumber should be removed.

Here is an example of an actual printout (not included in the test cases) showing that the (correct) line number (359) reported by this macro differs from the erroneous line number (236) reported by the backtrace system:

julia> Meshgen.testcase1()
    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ERROR LINE number = geometryPreprocess.359
    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ERROR LINE number = testcase1.1169
    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ERROR: BoundsError: attempt to access 0-element Array{Meshgen.PCAGarcaux,1}
  at index [3]
 [inlined code] from c:\Users\vavasis\Documents\Projects\qmg21\src_jl\meshgen\..
/geo/geo_pcag.jl:239
 in geometryPreprocess at no file:236
 [inlined code] from c:\Users\vavasis\Documents\Projects\qmg21\src_jl\meshgen\me
shgen.jl:1169
 in testcase1 at no file:1168

Note that if function f1 invokes f2, which generates the run-time error, and both are instrumented by this macro, then both functions print the line number of the error (in the case of f1, it is the location of the call to f2).