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

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:24:34 +0900 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote: 

SJT> Ted Zlatanov writes:
>> On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:10:38 -0500 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote: 

>> >> IMHO hashtables should always be printed completely and should be
>> >> treated like lists and vectors.

SJT> XEmacs abbreviates all "large" atomic objects in Lisp backtraces,
SJT> AFAIK.  This includes anything with a plist.  But you can have your
SJT> preference by setting `print-readably' globally.

>> >> If, however, compatibility with XEmacs is desired or people feel
>> >> strongly for print-readably, I will implement with
>> >> print-readably.
>> 
SM> char tables are always printed in full and we haven't had any complaints
SM> about that, so you're probably right: let's just always print them
SM> in full.  If it turns out to be problematic in some cases, we can later
SM> on add some extra variable to control the level of detail.
>> 
>> Great.  Maybe XEmacs should add print-unreadably ;)

SJT> We already have that. (^^;

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.  I'd like to make your life easier in
addition to providing features for GNU Emacs.  Will the current state of
things cause XEmacs breakage anywhere?

One idea I had is to check if print-readably is bound; if not then we
act as if it was bound and t.  That will DTRT in GNU Emacs and in
XEmacs, I hope.

Thanks
Ted