6.10.1 The messages window

The output of the external utilities is redirected by the IDE and it will be displayed in the messages window. The messages window is displayed automatically, if an external tool was run. The messages window can be also displayed manually by the selecting the menu item "Tools|Messages" or by pressing the key F11. The messages window is shown in gure (6.17).

If the output of the tool contains lenames and line numbers, the messages window can be used to navigate the source as in a browse window:

1. Pressing Enter or double clicking the output line will jump to the specied source line and close the messages window.
2. Pressing the space bar will jump to the specied source line, but will leave the messages window open, with the focus on it. This allows to quickly select another message line with the arrow keys and jump to another location in the sources.

The algorithm which extracts the le names and line numbers from the tool output is quite sophisticated, but in some cases it may fail⁴ .