Re: Two problems with directory-local variables

[Phil Sainty <psainty@orcon.net.nz>]

On 2018-09-18 11:15, Juri Linkov wrote:
> When I tried [add-dir-local-variable] it correctly added
>   ((nil
>     (eval message "hello")))

On this note, while I don't use the commands myself, I've often wished
that add-dir-local-variable would generate the dotted-pair syntax,
because I've often seen confusion about the syntax of dir-locals arising
from dotted vs non-dotted possibilities, and I feel strongly that the
dotted syntax is the most readable for these files.

i.e. To my mind, (eval message "hello") is liable to confuse people,
whereas (eval . (message "hello")) is rather clear.

Of course we wouldn't want this to end up in the file either:
(eval . (message . ("hello" . nil)))

I guess we'd need some code to only 'dot' the high level elements,
but not the values.

I don't suppose anything like that already exists?


-Phil