[bug #68464] Uninformative "missing delimiter" diagnostic in pic

Doug McIlroy <[email protected]> Sat, 20 Jun 2026 17:54:26 -0400 (EDT)

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.printing.groff.bugs
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?68464>

                 Summary: Uninformative "missing delimiter" diagnostic in pic
                   Group: GNU roff
               Submitter: dougmcilroy
               Submitted: Sat 20 Jun 2026 09:54:22 PM UTC
                Category: None
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: None
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Unlocked
         Planned Release: None


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Follow-up Comments:


-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat 20 Jun 2026 09:54:22 PM UTC By: Doug McIlroy <dougmcilroy>
 groff -p - >/dev/null
.PS
define x % [

.PE
pic:<standard input>:4: error: missing closing delimiter

The lne number is that of the last line of pic code. Essentially the
diagnostic says something is wrong somewhere in the whole pic script. It
doesn't give a hint of what kind of delimiter is missing.

(Actually two closing delimiters are missing, though one won't be detected
unless it arises in a macro expansion. To further confound the situation, pic
has at least two more kinds of closing delimiter: " and ).








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