All or almost all Unix editors support the syntax of "editor +42 file", to open the given file and start with the cursor at line 42. Alas, the syntax programs that output such data use is different: either "file:42: Something" or "file:42:1: Something", :1 being a column number.

This wrapper will recognize such references and call your $EDITOR using the + notation. Thus, once you see an error message, you can copy&paste the offending first word of it without having to think. Especially if your mouse selection is configured to allow ':', it's a single triple-click (L+L+M), and still pretty handy if not.

If your editor allows multi-open, "e" can also handle pipelines such as:

• git grep MEOW|e -:
• make 2>&1 >/dev/null|grep error:|e -::

Also, because of its short name, it reduces the typing needed to start the editor by half if you use vi, by 80% if emacs or jstar — and that's by far the most frequent command a Unix user does.

v0.2

Possible regression: to handle file:42 patterns in the middle of a line, e -: and -:: no longer allows filenames with a space. If this proves to be an issue, please shout at me.