Re: Environment variable to turn off carets

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   >    > In which you can pass the correct flag to the respective
   >    > programs.  This has the benefit that for the programs that do
   >    > have ADA caret output, but do not support this environment
   >    > variable, you can still silence it.
   > 
   >    The user would still need to check each program (regularly after
   >    updates) to find out which of them have such options and what
   >    they're called in each case. That's an unnecessary burden on the
   >    user. The programs themselves know very well what they support in
   >    each version, and adding the environment variable check is a
   >    one-time job per program (vs. once per user, program, and version).
   > 
   > Yes, but the user would have to do that anyway, in the cases where you
   > still get caret output.  I would be quite confused if I get caret
   > output despite saying that I don't want it.

   Sorry, can't follow you here. In my suggestion, why would you get
   caret output despite saying that you don't want it?

Programs that have caret output and do not support the NO_CARET_OUTPUT
environment variable would still output carets.

   > Maybe just keeping a config.site file that users can install would
   > be much easier, it could be part of the GNU coding standards, as
   > an example, or someone else could maintain it.  The benefit of
   > that is that _all_ programs can have supressed output of some sort
   > -- not just programs that support NO_CARET_OUTPU.

   What I gather from this is, that the proposal might be generalized a
   little. Instead of just dealing with carets, the variable could say
   "no redundant output" or something to this effect. Meaning that the
   output will be processed or interpreted by a tool rather than
   directly read by a human.

You make good points, and I like this approach better, something like
"plain" GNU error/warning messages.  Then if error messages with
embedded URLs to the relevant standard are introduced, that would fall
under the same environment variable and would "magically" vanish when
one uses this plain form of output.

   If there is consensus, I'd be happy with such a variable too. It
   would be a similar proposal, apart from a new name and different
   wording in the standards. As for implementation, suppressing carets
   would still be the first (and possibly only, at least for now) thing
   that gcc, bison etc. should do.

Indeed.