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bug#31623: 27.0; Elisp manual, index entry "; in comment"
From: |
Drew Adams |
Subject: |
bug#31623: 27.0; Elisp manual, index entry "; in comment" |
Date: |
Tue, 29 May 2018 17:38:49 -0700 (PDT) |
> > OK, if you say so. ;-) I was thinking more about "in"
> > meaning after `comment-start'. But yes, I guess that's
> > what was intended.
> >
> > If that's the intention then I think it might be clearer
> > if the index entry were "; outside a comment" or maybe
> > "; not in a comment".
>
> A later sentence in `(elisp) Comments' has:
>
> The Lisp reader discards comments; they do not become part of the
> Lisp objects which represent the program within the Lisp system.
>
> The discarded comment includes the leading ";", so I don't think it
> makes sense to treat the comment starter as being outside the comment.
Of course. I didn't mean anything different.
My point was that seeing an index entry "; in comment" I
thought it likely referred to a `;' char in the commented
text. I did not think that it was likely to be about the
places where a `;' char is considered to be a `comment-start'
char.
But certainly the `;' that starts a comment is part of the
comment itself. No one would doubt that, I think.
> > In any case, that statement is not really true: a semicolon
> > does not always start a comment in Lisp whenever it is not
> > within a string or a character constant. There is also the
> > case of it being escaped in a symbol name. E.g.,
> >
> > (setq a\;b 42)
> >
> > (Dunno whether there are additional cases - perhaps not.)
>
> I think not. So add "unescaped"?
>
> In Lisp, an unescaped semicolon (`;') starts a comment
> if it is not within a string or character constant.
Fine by me. Thanks in advance for making that change.
But I really think the index entry leaves something to
be desired - which is what this bug report is about.
The entry should indicate something about the subject
indexed. "; in comment" does not do that, for me, at
least.
In the case of the intended indexing, it's about where
`;' can start a Lisp comment - or more precisely, in
which contexts it does _not_ start a comment.
Someone looking that up might look for an entry such
as just ";" (you'd expect the subject to cover what
`;' can be used for in Lisp - which it does: comment
start, char constant, escaped char).
Or perhaps an entry such as "; as comment start" (but
that doesn't really suggest that the text will also
talk about other contexts for `;').
Or perhaps an entry such as "; used for commenting".
Or perhaps you have a suggestion.
- bug#31623: 27.0; Elisp manual, index entry "; in comment", Drew Adams, 2018/05/28
- bug#31623: 27.0; Elisp manual, index entry "; in comment", Noam Postavsky, 2018/05/29
- bug#31623: 27.0; Elisp manual, index entry "; in comment", Drew Adams, 2018/05/29
- bug#31623: 27.0; Elisp manual, index entry "; in comment", Noam Postavsky, 2018/05/29
- bug#31623: 27.0; Elisp manual, index entry "; in comment",
Drew Adams <=
- bug#31623: 27.0; Elisp manual, index entry "; in comment", Noam Postavsky, 2018/05/29
- bug#31623: 27.0; Elisp manual, index entry "; in comment", Drew Adams, 2018/05/29