ACATS 4.1 User's Guide
6.3.2 Range Indicators
Optional range indicators (sometimes known as location
indicators) can appear after the various markers in an ACATS test source
file. These describe the exact range of the reported location of an expected
error. Range indicators are usually used to expand the range of an error
beyond the same line as the ERROR: or other marker.
The format of a range indicator is:
{[sl:]sp[;[el:]ep]}
In the above, '{' and
'}' are literal, while '[' and ']' indicate optionality. Each of the
four values is relative, so it is one or two digits, with an optional
minus sign for el. Omitted values are assumed to be zero. Specifically:
sl
Start Line – offset before the current line for the start
of the error range.
sp
Start Position – position offset in the line indicated by sl,
relative to the start of the line.
el
End_Line – offset before the current line for the end of
the error range. Can be negative if the end of the error range follows
the error tag. But almost always should be zero.
ep
End Position – position offset from the last significant character
in the line indication by End_Line. (The last significant character is
the last non-white-space character not including any comment.)
This compact representation was chosen because of
the limited space given the ACATS line length limit (see
4.5)
and a desire to avoid unnecessarily cluttering tests with extraneous
information.