M-; false positives in lisp modes

[Samuel Padgett]

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Please write in English, because the Emacs maintainers do not have
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In GNU Emacs 20.7.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit)
 of Sun Mar  4 2001 on harpo.homeip.net
configured using `configure  --with-pop --with-x-toolkit=yes --with-x'

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

In lisp modes, I frequently use M-; to align comments.  M-; doesn't
work on the following line, however:

(message "M-; falsely matches the comment on this line!")

It believes the `;' in the string is the beginning of a comment.  I
see this behavior when starting emacs with -q and --no-site-file.

Recent input:
down-mouse-1 mouse-movement mouse-1 double-down-mouse-1 
double-mouse-1 down-mouse-1 mouse-1 down-mouse-1 mouse-movement 
mouse-movement mouse-movement mouse-movement mouse-movement 
mouse-movement mouse-movement mouse-movement mouse-movement 
mouse-movement mouse-movement mouse-movement mouse-movement 
mouse-movement mouse-movement mouse-movement drag-mouse-1 
down-mouse-1 mouse-movement mouse-1 M-x r e p o r t 
- e m a c s - b u g return m backspace M - ; SPC f 
a l s e SPC p o s i t i v e s SPC i n SPC e l i s p 
backspace backspace backspace backspace backspace C-x 
2 C-x 2 C-x o C-x b . e return C-x 0 C-x b C-g M-x 
M-p return

Recent messages:
`~/.emacs' 733 lines, 24933 characters
Wrote /home/sam/.emacs
`~/.emacs' 733 lines, 24931 characters
q runs the command fill-paragraph
Undo!
End of buffer [2 times]
Auto-saving...
Auto-saving...done
Attempt to split minibuffer window
Quit
Quit
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