Issue #17930 has been updated by Eregon (Benoit Daloze). This exact information is now available via `Thread::Backtrace::Location#source_range` (#22212), just slightly different method names. ---------------------------------------- Feature #17930: Add column information into error backtrace https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/17930#change-118404 * Author: mame (Yusuke Endoh) * Status: Closed * Assignee: mame (Yusuke Endoh) ---------------------------------------- Consider the following code and error. ``` data["data"].first["field"] #=> undefined method `[]` for nil:NilClass ``` There are two possibilities; the variable `data` is nil, or the return value of `first` is nil. Unfortunately, the error message is less informative to say which. This proposal allows to help identifying which method call failed. ``` $ ruby -r ./sample/no_method_error_ext.rb err1.rb err1.rb:2:in `<main>': undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError) data["data"].first["field"] ^^^^^^^^^ ``` ## Proposal I'd like to propose a feature to get column information from each `Thread::BacktraceLocation`. Maybe it is good to provide the following four methods: * `Thread::BacktraceLocation#first_lineno` * `Thread::BacktraceLocation#first_column` * `Thread::BacktraceLocation#last_lineno` * `Thread::BacktraceLocation#last_column` These names came from `RubyVM::AbstraceSyntaxTree::Node`'s methods. ## Implementation Here is a proof-of-concept implementation: https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/4540 See https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/4540/commits/6ff516f4985826e9f9c5606638001... for an example usage. (Note that, currently, you need to build ruby with `./configure cflags=-DEXPERIMENTAL_ISEQ_NODE_ID` to enable the feature.) To put it simply, this PR provides only a raw API, `Thread::BacktraceLocation#node_id`. To get actual column information, you need to manually identify `RubyVM::AbstractSyntaxTree::Node` that corresponds to `Thread::BacktraceLocation#node_id`. But it would be arguable to expose "node_id", so I will wrap it as the above four methods if this is accepted. Credit: the original implementation was done by @yui-knk. ## Drawback To use this feature, we need to enable `-DEXPERIMENTAL_ISEQ_NODE_ID` to add "node_id" information (a subtree ID of the original abstract syntax tree) into each byte code instruction. If we provide this feature, the option should be enabled by default. However, the option increases memory consumption. I performed a simple experiment: I created a scaffold app by `rails new`, and measured the memory usage after `rails s`. The result was 97 MB without `-DEXPERIMENTAL_ISEQ_NODE_ID`, and 100 MB with the option enabled. In my opinion, it is not so large, but requiring more gems will increase the difference. I will appriciate it if anyone could provide the actual memory increase in a more practical Rails app. Do you think this feature deserves the memory increase? ---Files-------------------------------- image.png (73.3 KB) -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/