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Suppose a source code interpreter outputs the error messages in the following format:
M123 Warning path/to/file 123 Description message
That is:
error_code error_type file line_number message
How can I set errorformat such that I get both the error_code and message in the quickfix window?
Please note that error_type can be any string, with and without numbers.
You can't do this with errorformat alone, but there are a couple of ways to do it. One is to filter the output of your interpreter with another program like this:
:set mp=make\ \\\|&\ error_filter
as explained in an un-indexed paragraph in the reference manual. To find it, execute :help quickfix-directory-stack and scroll up to the previous section titled "Filtering messages".
Another way is to post-process the contents of the quickfix list as described under :help QuickFixCmdPost-example.
Using either method, edit the error message to put error_code next to message and use an errorformat that sees them together as just a message (%m).
%m, and this can only be used once. I hope I am wrong, though!