Honesty with parse-partial-sexp

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Emacs!

It has become evident that certain files.el in Emacs use (car
(nth  9 ppss-state)) to obtain the position of the none-nested open
paren containing point.

However, syntax.texi says that this is secret data, not to be accessed
by the ordinary plebian Emacs user.  This doesn't seem entirely
consistent with the principles of free software.

So I propose documenting this properly.  Such as:


2006-12-07  Alan Mackenzie  <address@hidden>

        * syntax.texi (Parsing Balanced Expressions): Document the car of
        the ninth element returned by parse-partial-sexp.


Index: syntax.texi
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/emacs/emacs/lispref/syntax.texi,v
retrieving revision 1.53
diff -c -r1.53 syntax.texi
*** syntax.texi 18 Jul 2006 00:06:43 -0000      1.53
--- syntax.texi 7 Dec 2006 17:37:00 -0000
***************
*** 716,724 ****
  this element is @code{nil}.
  
  @item
! Internal data for continuing the parsing.  The meaning of this
! data is subject to change; it is used if you pass this list
! as the @var{state} argument to another call.
  @end enumerate
  
  Elements 1, 2, and 6 are ignored in the argument @var{state}.  Element
--- 716,727 ----
  this element is @code{nil}.
  
  @item
! This element is a list.  Its car is the character position of the
! start of the outermost parenthetical grouping containing the stopping
! point; @code{nil} if none.  The rest of the list is internal data for
! continuing the parsing.  The meaning of this data is subject to
! change; it is used if you pass the list as the @var{state} argument to
! another call.
  @end enumerate
  
  Elements 1, 2, and 6 are ignored in the argument @var{state}.  Element


-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Ittersbach, Germany).