From: Daniel Nagy <danielnagy@posteo.de>
To: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
Cc: 66890@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#66890: 29.1; buffer-size should also accept the buffer's name as string argument
Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2023 20:57:41 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87jzqxgrof.fsf@posteo.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <jwvwmuzasav.fsf-monnier+emacs@gnu.org>
Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
> I do have an opinion on this: I wish I could go back in time and get
> rid of this `buffer-or-string` business altogether.
> The reason is that I've seen several ELisp packages which abused
> buffer names as "handles" for buffers, leading to nasty bugs when
> those buffers get renamed (e.g. by things like uniquify).
A reduced API surface will not prevent people from using buffer names as
handles. They will just wrap the string with `(get-buffer ...)' and call
it a day. That seems like a logic problem, that you cannot check for via
function arguments.
> Could you show some examples of the kind of reductions you're thinking
> of?
No, I cannot. This was mostly meant as a general statement. But maybe I
can argue in the other direction. What if things from that list above
were requiring to be more explicit. Such that you would need to write
`(with-current-buffer (get-buffer "mybuffer") ...)' instead of
`(with-current-buffer "mybuffer" ...)'. That would seem to me like an
(unnecessary) complication.
In general, I would say that, if the computer can unambigously decide
what is supposed to happen, it should help me and automatically correct
my "mistakes". Also I would argue, that is similar to what is already
present in Emacs with the dwim commands. Commands can behave differently
if, for example a region is active. So the "Do what I mean" notion
means, if I pass in a string, does the function unambigously know what I
mean with that? If yes, then it should do that.
--
Daniel Nagy
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-11-04 20:57 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-11-01 16:31 bug#66890: 29.1; buffer-size should also accept the buffer's name as string argument Daniel Nagy
2023-11-02 6:32 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-11-02 19:38 ` Stefan Kangas
2023-11-02 20:55 ` Daniel Nagy
2023-11-03 13:38 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-11-04 0:21 ` Stefan Kangas
2023-11-04 6:03 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-11-04 10:43 ` Stefan Kangas
2023-11-04 20:57 ` Daniel Nagy [this message]
2023-11-04 22:12 ` Drew Adams
2023-11-05 5:35 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-11-05 23:02 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
[not found] ` <87bkcbzy6c.fsf@posteo.de>
2023-11-03 6:46 ` Eli Zaretskii
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