small issue with emacs customization

small issue with emacs customization

[Dieter Jurzitza]

Dear listmembers,
when I enter the emacs-customization menu, move forward from wp-group to 
tex to auctex and try to modify Tex Pdf Mode from "off" to "on" and say "save 
for future sessions" I get an error about unmatched parentheses.

The Message buffer tells me:
forward-sexp: Scan error: "Unbalanced parentheses", 996, 7860

The error is caused by the modify-syntax-entry - line in .gnu-emacs-custom:
<more commands>
         ;; several comments here ...
         (modify-syntax-entry ?" "w")
<more commands>

No error happens at startup time, emacs loads and (at least seems to ...) 
accept the command, however, the customization - save function does not.

Googling around I found a potential hint in cobol-mode.el:
    (modify-syntax-entry ?\" "." st)  ; wiki \" bug workaround comment
but this made nothing really clearer to me .... should I modify ?" into ?
\" ???

User error or issue with the customization function?
Could some gentle soul shine some light on this?
Thank you very much for looking into this,
take care




Dieter Jurzitza
-- 
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                | ~x~ |/-----\   /
                 \   /-       \_/
  ^^__   _        /  _  ____   /
 <°°__ \- \_/     |  |/    |  |
  ||  ||         _| _|    _| _|

if you really want to see the pictures above - use some font
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Re: small issue with emacs customization

[Stefan Monnier]

> when I enter the emacs-customization menu, move forward from wp-group to 
> tex to auctex and try to modify Tex Pdf Mode from "off" to "on" and say "save 
> for future sessions" I get an error about unmatched parentheses.

> The Message buffer tells me:
> forward-sexp: Scan error: "Unbalanced parentheses", 996, 7860

> The error is caused by the modify-syntax-entry - line in .gnu-emacs-custom:
> <more commands>
>          ;; several comments here ...
>          (modify-syntax-entry ?" "w")

You need to escape the " in ?" -> ?\"

Sadly enough Emacs's syntax-tables aren't powerful enough to describe
email lisp syntax.


        Stefan