From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: documentation of integers, fixnums and bignums Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2018 00:07:06 +0300 Message-ID: <83in3fsnph.fsf@gnu.org> References: <0f632217-27ad-4f54-8ce0-480301fa2a86@cs.ucla.edu> <83pnxorm37.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1536440707 24546 195.159.176.226 (8 Sep 2018 21:05:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2018 21:05:07 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Paul Eggert Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Sep 08 23:05:03 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1fykPe-0006HF-MT for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 08 Sep 2018 23:05:02 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:45257 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fykRl-00074l-1o for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 08 Sep 2018 17:07:13 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:40781) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fykRe-00074R-5p for Emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 08 Sep 2018 17:07:06 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fykRa-0001XG-QE for Emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 08 Sep 2018 17:07:05 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:55000) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fykRa-0001X8-MA; Sat, 08 Sep 2018 17:07:02 -0400 Original-Received: from [176.228.60.248] (port=1829 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1fykRa-0003TQ-99; Sat, 08 Sep 2018 17:07:02 -0400 In-reply-to: (message from Paul Eggert on Sat, 8 Sep 2018 13:05:48 -0700) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:229518 Archived-At: > Cc: Emacs-devel@gnu.org > From: Paul Eggert > Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2018 13:05:48 -0700 > > Eli Zaretskii wrote: > > I think it's important for the Lisp programmers to > > know what kind of objects they could get as return values. Maybe in > > some distant future we will no longer care about the difference > > between fixnums and bignums, but as of now, we still do. > > When Lisp programmers care about object types, they should care only whether the > objects are integers. Ideally, yes. But in practice dealing with very large integers is something people don't assume naturally, and for now bignums and fixnums don't even behave identically in Emacs Lisp. > What you see as "some distant future" I see as happening before the next > release, by the way. Perhaps that explains why you're more in favor of > documenting the current not-yet-finished situation, whereas I'm more in favor of > keeping the documentation simple and implementing it that way. Well, that changeset started with an attempt to fix a woefully misleading documentation left behind, which still claimed we produce cons cells in some situations. We must keep the master branch reasonably well documented, because it is being used by a lot of people. We cannot leave it in WIP state for longer than a few hours. When code changes, documentation should follow immediately. Yes, that means additional work, which might in the end prove more than absolutely necessary, but I see no other way when development is done incrementally on the master branch (as opposed to a feature branch). Thanks.