How do I get BBEdit to display the error browser programmatically?

Question

One of the nice features of BBEdit is that it can show a list of errors (e.g. syntax errors in a Ruby program), and clicking on the error will display the line in the source code file.

How can I bring this window up programmatically, e.g. via the command line, AppleScript, or a language module?

In my specific situation, I'm compiling SML/NJ programs. The compiler lists errors in the following format:

codegen.sml:121.31 Error: syntax error: inserting  LPAREN
codegen.sml:130.49 Error: syntax error: inserting  EQUALOP

When I get compiler errors like that, I'd like BBEdit to display those error messages and let me click on them to display the buggy line in my code.

Answer 1

You can do it using AppleScript and BBEdit's results browser command. It isn't well documented, but there are some good examples around to help you out. For example: John Gruber's CSS Syntax Checker.

Here is a sample AppleScript.

tell application "BBEdit"
  set error_list to ¬
    {{result_kind: "Error", result_file: "/path/to/codegen.sml",¬
      result_line: 121, message: "syntax error: inserting  LPAREN"},¬
     {result_kind: "Error", result_file: "/path/to/codegen.sml",¬
      result_line: 130, message: "syntax error: inserting  EQUALOP"}}
  make new results browser with data error_list with properties ¬
    {name:"Errors"}
end tell

Of course, you will want to create the error_list variable programmatically, but this should get you started. If you change /path/to/codegen.sml to a file that exists on your system, you can see it in action.