From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Drew Adams" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.bugs Subject: bug#12564: 24.1; Emacs Lisp Reference Manual; Confusing paragraph regarding association lists' definition; Section 20.6.1 "Basic Completion Functions"; 5th paragraph Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2012 13:27:59 -0700 Message-ID: <9C99AC9C311D44DE8BF1FF1C75F80A24@us.oracle.com> References: <87pq508xre.fsf@gmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1349209726 7401 80.91.229.3 (2 Oct 2012 20:28:46 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2012 20:28:46 +0000 (UTC) To: "'Bruno "=?UTF-8?Q?F=C3=A9lix?=" Rezende Ribeiro'" , <12564@debbugs.gnu.org> Original-X-From: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Oct 02 22:28:50 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1TJ95A-0005YK-IM for geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; 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Tue, 2 Oct 2012 20:28:01 GMT Original-Received: from abhmt105.oracle.com (abhmt105.oracle.com [141.146.116.57]) by acsmt358.oracle.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id q92KS1NE025251; Tue, 2 Oct 2012 15:28:01 -0500 Original-Received: from dradamslap1 (/130.35.178.248) by default (Oracle Beehive Gateway v4.0) with ESMTP ; Tue, 02 Oct 2012 13:28:01 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 In-Reply-To: <87pq508xre.fsf@gmail.com> Thread-Index: Ac2g1hM//qwj5ipGRuq0fKQFR/NJLgABZSSw X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6157 X-Source-IP: acsinet21.oracle.com [141.146.126.237] X-BeenThere: debbugs-submit@debbugs.gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.13 Precedence: list X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 2) X-Received-From: 140.186.70.43 X-BeenThere: bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org List-Id: "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.bugs:65126 Archived-At: > In the paragraph's first sentence there is a reference to section 5.8 > "Association Lists" in the same manual, where one can read in > the first paragraph: > > An "association list", or "alist" for short, records a mapping from > keys to values. It is a list of cons cells called > "associations": the CAR of each cons cell is the "key", and the > CDR is the "associated value".(1) And where one can read the following qualification, in the eighth paragraph: In Emacs Lisp, it is _not_ an error if an element of an association list is not a cons cell. The alist search functions simply ignore such elements. Many other versions of Lisp signal errors in such cases. You have to read beyon the intro at the beginning, to get to the details. The intro gives the basic idea and an illustrative example. The corner case (ignoring a non-cons element vs raising an error) is mentioned later. And that's the right presentation order, IMHO. > An association list is any list that has none elements or at least one > cons cell and possibly other elements. > > Since I don't know what is the case, either I'm missing > something trivial, or that is a manual bug. Even if it's > consistent, I think it could be more clear. This is called _jumping to conclusions_ before reading the entire presentation of the topic. It can be risky, as this experience shows.