Next: Debuggers, Previous: Grep Searching, Up: Building [Contents][Index]

### 27.5 Finding Syntax Errors On The Fly

Flymake mode is a minor mode that performs on-the-fly syntax checking for many programming and markup languages, including C, C++, Perl, HTML, and TeX/LaTeX. It is somewhat analogous to Flyspell mode, which performs spell checking for ordinary human languages in a similar fashion (see Spelling). As you edit a file, Flymake mode runs an appropriate syntax checking tool in the background, using a temporary copy of the buffer. It then parses the error and warning messages, and highlights the erroneous lines in the buffer. The syntax checking tool used depends on the language; for example, for C/C++ files this is usually the C compiler. Flymake can also use build tools such as `make` for checking complicated projects.

To enable Flymake mode, type `M-x flymake-mode`. You can jump to the errors that it finds by using `M-x flymake-goto-next-error` and `M-x flymake-goto-prev-error`. To display any error messages associated with the current line, type `M-x flymake-display-err-menu-for-current-line`.

For more details about using Flymake, see Flymake in The Flymake Manual.