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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-31T17:29:20+00:00

Is there a standard/common way to give compiler-style error messages that point to a

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Is there a standard/common way to give compiler-style error messages that point to a line and column when the input is in a Unicode format?

For example, a very common compiler error messages format is:
“filename:line_number:column_number: error message”, e.g.:

  • (From GCC): bad.c:1:10: syntax error, unexpected STRING
  • (From a custom tool) input.dat:45:3: expected String_Literal, found ';',

This is unambiguous when the input is a fixed 8-bit encoding, such as ISO-8859-1. But when the input is Unicode (UTF-8, UTF-16, etc), what does (or should) “column” mean in this case? Which byte? Which code-point? Which grapheme? Is there any tool that sets a precedent choosing one or the other?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    A column should refer to non-combining Unicode code points. Both parts of a surrogate pair (in UTF-16) should share a column. A combining diacritical mark should share a column with the base character it modifies. This may apply to other non-spacing code points as well.

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