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Error carets pad multi-byte UTF-8 byte-for-byte, so the ^ lands right of the token on a terminal

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
84/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
c
Domain
compilers, testing

Research direction

Start with eigs_print_caret_src and inspect how it builds the caret prefix from the byte column. Then run or extend tests/test_lint.sh with runtime-error and parse-error cases containing multi-byte characters; done means the caret line preserves whitespace bytes and aligns the caret with the token.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

area:lint-tooling kind:silent-wrong

Found by the blind critic on #1368.

eigs_print_caret_src pads the caret line with one space per BYTE before the column. After a non-ASCII character, each multi-byte sequence adds extra cells, so on a terminal the ^ appears to the right of the token. Example: on \ts is "éé" + nope it lands 2 cells right. The byte column is correct (the LSP contract is bytes, #881); only the human-facing display is off.

Done when

  • The caret prefix copies whitespace bytes as-is (tabs are already handled) and pads one space per CHARACTER (UTF-8 lead byte) for everything else.
  • A test in tests/test_lint.sh pins the caret line for a runtime error and a parse error after multi-byte characters.
Dominant language
C
Stars
3
Forks
7
Avg merge
4h 5m
Merged PRs (30d)
116

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