Re: hash-table-{to, from}-alist

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:54:49 +0900 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> 
wrote: 

SJT> Ted Zlatanov writes:
>> On Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:05:52 +0900 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> 
>> wrote: 
>> 
SJT> Ted Zlatanov writes:
>> >> Can you and Stefan figure out whether to have print-readably or
>> >> not?  I was against it, and Stefan supported that.  But let's see
>> >> the pro argument and discuss this.
>> 
SJT> The pro argument is that unless you're debugging the hash table, it's
SJT> a PITA to have a hash table that gets recursively passed to each
SJT> function down the line taking up 20 screens for each frame in a
SJT> backtrace.
>> 
>> Isn't the same argument valid for lists?

SJT> No.  You don't know whether a list is data or an executable expression
SJT> in Lisp until you eval it.  Lists are special.  A comparison to
SJT> vectors might be more appropriate.

OK, that makes sense.  I checked the source and I think the relevant GNU
Emacs variables are eval-expression-print-length and print-length, which
it affects.  They control how many vector/bitvector elements are
printed.  Would it work to say:

;; pseudo-lisp
(when (and (bound-and-not-nil print-readably) 
           (not (natnump print-length)))
 (setq print-length 10))

Ted