Re: In info: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil

[Chong Yidong]

Juri Linkov <address@hidden> writes:

>> When doing C-h for the first time, the "dir" node is shown.  The menu item
>> and tool bar item back in history is enabled.  Selecting Back in history in
>> the menu, pressing the tool bar putton, or just using the key l gives:
>> byte-code: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
>>
>> The menu item looks like this:
>>    ["Back in history" Info-history-back :active Info-history
>>     :help "Go back in history to the last node you were at"]
>>
>> but when entering "dir" for the first time, the value of Info-history is
>> not nil, but ((nil nil 1)).  The first nil is supposed to be a file name
>> and it is when info tries to use it as such the error message above shows
>> up.  How Info-history becomes ((nil nil 1)) instead of just nil I don't know.
>
> This is due to the following changes in info.el from 2005-11-25 that
> removed some tests for Info-current-file.  I don't see a need for these
> changes.  Unless there is a reason to keep these changes we could
> revert them.  Below is not a patch, but a partial diff that shows
> changes in CVS:

I believe they were originally introduced because Info was signalling
errors for Info-on-current-node, since it put nil in
Info-current-file.  However, a few days after this change was made, we
worked out a different way to handle Info-on-current-node, where the
actual filename is put into Info-current-file.  So these tests are
probably not needed now.

I don't have time to work on Emacs at the moment.  Juri, could you
check if Info-on-current-node still works OK after reverting the
change?  If so, reverting is probably the correct fix.