4.4 Clang basic libraries
Clang is a compiler frontend, and its most important operations are related to diagnostics. Diagnostics require precise information about position location in the source code. Let’s explore the basic classes that Clang provides for these operations.
4.4.1 SourceManager and SourceLocation
Clang, as a compiler, operates with text files (programs), and locating a specific place in the program is one of the most frequently requested operations. Let’s look at a typical Clang error report. Consider a program from Chapter 3, Clang AST, as seen in Figure 3.33. Clang produces the following error message for the program:
$ <...>/llvm-project/install/bin/clang -fsyntax-only maxerr.cpp
maxerr.cpp:3:12: error: use of undeclared identifier ’ab’
return ab;
^
1 error generated...
