From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Building Emacs overflowed pure space Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 11:49:37 -0400 Message-ID: References: <7dbe73ed0607180138x35e9d9bft3e42f20cb369795c@mail.gmail.com> <200607181929.k6IJTZN9028639@jane.dms.auburn.edu> <85hd1ayc0o.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1153583409 21842 80.91.229.2 (22 Jul 2006 15:50:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 15:50:09 +0000 (UTC) Cc: teirllm@dms.auburn.edu, ralphm@members.fsf.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org, storm@cua.dk, mituharu@math.s.chiba-u.ac.jp, mathias.dahl@gmail.com Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Jul 22 17:50:06 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1G4Jjp-0006cf-8N for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 22 Jul 2006 17:49:57 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1G4Jjo-0004lu-RA for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 22 Jul 2006 11:49:56 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1G4Jja-0004jT-Ab for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 22 Jul 2006 11:49:42 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1G4JjZ-0004im-OA for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 22 Jul 2006 11:49:41 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1G4JjZ-0004if-IX for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 22 Jul 2006 11:49:41 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.164] (helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1G4JkC-0000jn-Et; Sat, 22 Jul 2006 11:50:20 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.34) id 1G4JjV-0004ed-AD; Sat, 22 Jul 2006 11:49:37 -0400 Original-To: David Kastrup In-reply-to: <85hd1ayc0o.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> (message from David Kastrup on Fri, 21 Jul 2006 21:48:55 +0200) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:57474 Archived-At: > It would be a little better to have a list of ten of them and pick at > random. That would facilitate examining values in the Lisp debugger > on those occasions when you really want to. I don't see how. They are uninterned, after all. You can use symbol-value to examine an uninterned symbol. If it uses names like `uninterned-6', and you know to find that as (nth 6 uninterned-vars-list), you can examine it. But this is not something user programs are likely to do by accident. And "picking at random" means that it becomes unpredictable what loop combinations will happen to be debuggable, and what combinations will not. It is not as good as if we had a feature in the debugger to do this job 100%. Ideal would be having a feature to examine a variable in the debugger's selected stack frame. However, that would be a lot of work. So I proposed something that would give a little bit more debuggability in a pinch, while being very easy to do. It seems like a pointless exercise in obfuscation. It does not buy us any encapsulation, and makes debugging and understanding the code harder when disassembling it. Maybe you are right. Lots of other internal values are exposed inside Emacs in ways that are not quite clean; two more for dolist and dotimes would not be much risk. Does anyone argue against?