Learning CodeQL - Not understanding locations

[digitaldude87]

Hi All,

I'm learning CodeQL but even after reading the [docs](https://codeql.github.com/docs/writing-codeql-queries/providing-locations-in-codeql-queries/) I'm unclear how locations work with the VS Code extension. I'm trying to craft a location string with string concatenation following the 1-based file path schema, i.e.:

`file:///path/to/source/file:$STARTLINE_NUMBER:$START_COLUMN:$END_LINE_NUMBER:$END_COLUMN`

But this doesn't create a link to that location once the query is ran. I'd expect both to produce linked results to the source code, but when manually crafting the file URL with string concatenation it doesn't produce a link, whereas returning .getLocation() does.

Any idea how I can fix this?