Re: The `risky-local-variable' blacklist

[Davis Herring <herring@lanl.gov>]

> You do not understand.  I was speaking very specifically about the
> timeclock-mode-string.  My comments only apply to variables used as
> mode-line-string.

Ah -- the actual mode-line, not the "line in a file that sets the mode".  
Oops.

> I don't think you understand the reason why timeclock-mode-string was not
> dangerous before: timeclock-mode-string can have a value of the form
> (:eval <foo>) which means "evaluate <foo> to get the string to display".
> So there's clearly something dangerous here.  Such evalution-in-mode-string
> is new in Emacs-21, so most foo-mode-line-string variable have suddenly been
> made dangerous.  Instead of going through all those vars and marking them
> risky, Emacs-21 decided that "if the var is not marked `risky', then ignore
> any of those new :eval special forms".  I.e. it's safe either way. but in
> order to be able to use the new feature, you need to mark the var as
> "risky".

The documentation I have for `mode-line-format' has a slight bug, then. It
says that "For a symbol, its value is used (but it is ignored if t or
nil).";  it does not say that the symbol's value is processed recursively
(as it does for the other things that are re-interpreted).  The Elisp 
manual does describe the double-evaluation; should the docstring be 
changed?

> I didn't discuss your general point about risky variables (because I mostly
> agree with it).

Well, I'm glad something I said made sense.  Sorry that the rest was 
noise.

Davis Herring

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