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digitalmars.D - DMD spellchecker

reply "Rob T" <alanb ucora.com> writes:
A colleague of mine who has started coding in D sent me an email 
to say how impressed he is by the spell checker in the compiler.

I've been making frequent use out of the spell checker too, and 
appreciate this incredibly simple innovation.

The point I'd like to make is that that sometimes simple features 
can have a "larger than what you thought it was worth" positive 
impact, so never underestimate the value of improving the user 
experience.

I think Walter may be the person to thank for this idea, but I'm 
not sure who came up with it.

Just want to say thanks for thinking outside the box!

--rt
Jul 16 2013
next sibling parent "bearophile" <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Rob T:


 I think Walter may be the person to thank for this idea, but 
 I'm not sure who came up with it.


I saw that feature in Mathematica lot of time, so I suggested it 
to add to Python and later to D. Python devs have usually ignored 
my suggestions :-)

Currently that feature in D has some bugs, it suggests private 
names from modules, it doesn't work with UFCS chains, and more. 
All such bugs are in Bugzilla entries.

Another improvement (currently not present in Bugzilla) comes 
from Ada, that I think really spell checks variable names that 
contain English words written wrongly.

Bye,
bearophile
Jul 16 2013
prev sibling parent reply Martin Nowak <code dawg.eu> writes:
On 07/17/2013 01:06 AM, Rob T wrote:

 A colleague of mine who has started coding in D sent me an email to say
 how impressed he is by the spell checker in the compiler.

 I've been making frequent use out of the spell checker too, and
 appreciate this incredibly simple innovation.


Yeah it's really helpful from time to time.

There was a simple idea to reduce the number of false proposals.
Namely reducing the Levenshtein distance and the search scope for short 
variable names.
Jul 17 2013
parent reply "Rob T" <alanb ucora.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 17 July 2013 at 18:47:47 UTC, Martin Nowak wrote:

 On 07/17/2013 01:06 AM, Rob T wrote:

 A colleague of mine who has started coding in D sent me an 
 email to say
 how impressed he is by the spell checker in the compiler.

 I've been making frequent use out of the spell checker too, and
 appreciate this incredibly simple innovation.


 Yeah it's really helpful from time to time.

 There was a simple idea to reduce the number of false proposals.
 Namely reducing the Levenshtein distance and the search scope 
 for short variable names.


What really needs improving are the occasional cryptic and 
unhelpful compiler error messages. DMD is not alone with this 
problem, so I'm not saying DMD is especially bad among compilers, 
but no doubt this is an area that can be substantially improved 
and would be appreciated greatly.

--rt
Jul 17 2013
parent "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx> writes:
On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 09:13:44PM +0200, Rob T wrote:

 On Wednesday, 17 July 2013 at 18:47:47 UTC, Martin Nowak wrote:

On 07/17/2013 01:06 AM, Rob T wrote:

A colleague of mine who has started coding in D sent me an email to
say how impressed he is by the spell checker in the compiler.

I've been making frequent use out of the spell checker too, and
appreciate this incredibly simple innovation.


Yeah it's really helpful from time to time.

There was a simple idea to reduce the number of false proposals.
Namely reducing the Levenshtein distance and the search scope for
short variable names.


 
 What really needs improving are the occasional cryptic and unhelpful
 compiler error messages. DMD is not alone with this problem, so I'm
 not saying DMD is especially bad among compilers, but no doubt this is
 an area that can be substantially improved and would be appreciated
 greatly.


+1.

One especially frustrating instance of this is when DMD gags errors
inside signature constraints (which I posted about recently): a small
typo in opCast causes the compiler to spew out pages and pages of how no
opImpl overload was matched, with no clue whatsoever that opCast was the
culprit. The fact that writing a stub version of opCast in some test
code (in an attempt to localize the problem) works, but copy-n-pasting
the real code in its place it mysteriously refuses to match the right
opImpl overload again, only made it even more frustrating.

In the end, I learned the real cause of the problem only by writing a
unittest that explicitly invoked opCast. Only then did I get a *real*
error message out of the compiler that described what had gone wrong. It
felt really frustrating that after all this detective work, the only
thing that came out at the end was a syntax error. It begs the question
of why, if it's a *syntax* error, couldn't the compiler have complained
about it up front.


T

-- 
Many open minds should be closed for repairs. -- K5 user
Jul 17 2013