[tex-live] uninitialized line number in pdfTeX

[Werner LEMBERG]

> Aside: do you happen to know if these are canonical features of
> glibc or introduced somewhere downstream?  I ask because they are
> not mentioned in the current libc manual
> (http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/) -- MALLOC_CHECK_ with
> values <=2 is discussed, but not 3, and MALLOC_PERTURB_ is not
> mentioned.  So if they are in the base glibc, as I expect they are,
> we should report a documentation bug.

No idea, sorry.  I've read about those values in the emacs-devel list,
IIRC, and I use them by default especially for finding memory problems
in FreeType.

>     BTW, value 0 looks wrong for me also...  
> 
> I speculate that it (and the uninitialized value in the first place)
> is due to the source file using macros, and macros being treated
> essentially like files in the implementation (of \scantokens in
> eTeX).  There is no access to the "real" line number at the TeX
> level, last I looked into it.  It's been a longstanding problem.

Thanks for the info.  IMHO, this makes the feature almost completely
useless since in most cases an error happens within a macro.


    Werner