[Lazarus] CodeTools: what is an "identifier"

[Mattias Gaertner]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:26:47 +0200
Bernd Kreuss <prof7bit at googlemail.com> wrote:

> [sending this a second time because I got a strange error from the list
> server]
> 
> Mattias Gaertner wrote:
> 
> > I didn't test the code much.
> > I just saw that codebrowser stores file positions, not clean positions.
> > Makes sense.
> > I fixed GetCodeHelp.
> 
> Ok, It works now. BTW: The explanation about the codetools in the wiki
> is already quite helpful, I don't know why I didn't find this text
> earlier, It would have saved me some time.
> 
> The GetCodeHelp() function is now working as expected but I discovered
> something else and this is currently also visible in the code editor in
> the svn version:
> 
> consider the following small program:
> 
> program foo;
> 
> type
>   TAnswer = Integer; // represents an answer
> 
> var
>   Answer : TAnswer; // in this global variable we store the answer
> 
> {call this to find the answer for everything}
> procedure FindAnswer;
> begin
>   Answer := 42;
> end;
> 
> begin
>   FindAnswer;
>   Writeln(Answer);
> end.
> 
> if you have lazarus running from the console so that you can see the
> debug messages and move the mouse around in the above program over the
> various occurrences of the identifiers you will observe that whenever
> you are over the *declaration* it will raise (and gracefully catch) an
> exception and at the same time the hint window will miss the part for
> chhoSmartHint (the part with full declaration, filename and line/column)
> and only show the comment help (and fpdoc if available).
> 
> If you move the mouse over the actual usage of these names then it will
> show all 3 parts of the hint and not throw the exception. The Exception
> happens somewhere deep within TFindDeclarationTool.FindSmartHint() or
> .FindDeclaration() and is probably because it is already sitting at the
> declaration and cant find a declaration for the declaration itself.
> 
> This impacts the use in the CodeBrowser since we point them all directly
> at the declarations and so it will never give a smarthint and cannot
> fully replace the old default hint from the code browser. I'm sure this
> is only a little forgotten IF ELSE somewhere in FindSmartHint() that
> would do the trick but I can't easily find the spot where (how) to do this.

Fixed in svn rev 26882.

Mattias