Re: evaluating numbers

[Stephen Berman <stephen.berman@gmx.net>]

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On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 19:20:23 +0900 Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@traduction-libre.org> wrote:

>> On Nov 7, 2019, at 18:57, Stephen Berman <stephen.berman@gmx.net> wrote:
>> 
>> On Thu, 7 Nov 2019 18:43:40 +0900 Jean-Christophe Helary
>> <jean.christophe.helary@traduction-libre.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> A while ago the biggest number that evaluated to a character (that I could not
>>> display) was 1114111 (evaluated to "?􏿿 ").
>>> 
>>> Now, I can only go up to 127 (#o177, #x7f, ?\C-?) and 128 evaluates to (#o200,
>>> #x80) which looks like the ASCII character set, but I was under the impression
>>> that Emacs had its own character set...
>>> 
>>> What's going on here ?
>> 
>> This:
>> 
>>  eval-expression-print-maximum-character is a variable defined in ‘simple.el’.
>>  Its value is 127
>> 
>>    You can customize this variable.
>> 
>> 
>>  This variable was introduced, or its default value was changed, in
>>  version 26.1 of Emacs.
>>    Probably introduced at or before Emacs version 26.1.
>
> Thank you very much.
>
> What's the rationale behind this change ?
>
> I find that's a bit silly to limit the character set range available with this
> evaluation.
>
> Anybody knows ?

I think the main rationale was that it could take a long time for Emacs
to return the evaluation when the system had a lot of fonts installed,
because Emacs would try them all to display the character.

Steve Berman