METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DISPLAYING LOCATIONS OF ERRORS DETECTED INSIDE SOFTWARE MACRO CALLS

A method and apparatus for generating more helpful error messages during compilation of a software program. The software program contains a macro definition and an invocation of the macro. The macro is expanded during the compilation process. The invention generates several tables that save the history of the macro expansion. If an error occurs during compilation of the macro, the invention prints an error message, using the saved history information, that specifically identifies the location of the error in the source program of the macro and the history of the macro expansion. The invention can print multi-line macro histories for nested macro calls.