Improve globbing "unmatched brace" error message

[danielshahaf]

I did this

% curl -d '{ "hello world": null }' http://example.com/{foo
curl: (3) [globbing] unmatched brace in column 20

I thought the error message was referring to the argument to -d and spent a while scratching my had trying to figure out why the first l of null would be reported as the location of the error. (In this instance it may be obvious, but this is a reduced example of a long command line.)

I expected the following

I suggest that the error message be clarified. For example:

• Change "column" to "character"

• Include the failing argument in the error message:

    curl: (3) [globbing] unmatched brace at character 20 of «http://example.com/{foo»
  

• Include part of argument in the error message, e.g.,

    unmatched brace at character 20 (near ".com/{foo")
  

  This is inspired by perl's parser's error reporting:

    % perl -e '}'
    ⋮
    syntax error at -e line 1, near "}"
    ⋮
  

curl/libcurl version

curl 7.60.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.60.0 OpenSSL/1.1.0h zlib/1.2.11 libidn2/2.0.4 libpsl/0.20.2 (+libidn2/2.0.4) libssh2/1.8.0 nghttp2/1.32.0 librtmp/2.3
Release-Date: 2018-05-16
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps ldap ldaps pop3 pop3s rtmp rtsp scp sftp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp
Features: AsynchDNS IDN IPv6 Largefile GSS-API Kerberos SPNEGO NTLM NTLM_WB SSL libz TLS-SRP HTTP2 UnixSockets HTTPS-proxy PSL

(installed via the OS's package manager)

operating system

Debian unstable