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 also be displayed manually by selecting the menu item ”Tools—Messages” or by pressing the F11 key. The messages window is shown in figure (6.17).
If the output of the tool contains filenames and line numbers, the messages window can be used to navigate the source as in a browse window:
The algorithm which extracts the file names and line numbers from the tool output is quite sophisticated, but in some cases it may fail4.
4Suggestions for improvement, or better yet, patches that improve the algorithm, are always welcome.