Re: Lisp primitives and their calling of the change hooks

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>> FWIW, we do not try to make those numbers match (and their begin/end
>> specs don't necessarily match either).
> In practice, these numbers match for the vast majority of buffer
> changing calls, and they match at 1-1.

Yes, as discussed numerous times in the past ;-)

> These numbers, in an ideal world, would match.

Not in my ideal world, no.

> It is also not true:

As mentioned, I'd consider that as a bug.

> insert-file-contents, in circumstances explored in
> summer 2016, invokes only a-c-f, not b-c-f.

And indeed, I considered it a bug and AFAIK this is now fixed.

>> For most of the others, a deeper inspection would be needed to figure
>> out if there's an actual bug or if it's just a normal occurrence.
> We know there is a bug in insert-file-contents (See summer 2016).
                ^^
                was

> I would be surprised indeed if there weren't others, too.

I would too.

> However, we could improve the documentation of this situation in the
> elisp manual.

We currently say:

      Do @emph{not} expect the before-change hooks and the after-change
    hooks be called in balanced pairs around each buffer change.  Also
    don't expect the before-change hooks to be called for every chunk of
    text Emacs is about to delete.  These hooks are provided on the
    assumption that Lisp programs will use either before- or the
    after-change hooks, but not both, and the boundaries of the region
    where the changes happen might include more than just the actual
    changed text, or even lump together several changes done piecemeal.

which is lax enough that any behavior could be argued to be acceptable.
IOW I think it's too lax.  We should probably try and fix it to reflect
the fact that every change should be covered by the last preceding b-c-f
and should be followed by a corresponding call to a-c-f (and this
before the next call to b-c-f).


        Stefan