From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Emanuel Berg Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: mixing argument types Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2018 21:08:02 +0200 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: <864lffljal.fsf@zoho.com> References: <86tvnhktf7.fsf@zoho.com> <86pny4ly4p.fsf@zoho.com> <86lg8slxsd.fsf_-_@zoho.com> <86d0u4ltrl.fsf@zoho.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1535396906 11698 195.159.176.226 (27 Aug 2018 19:08:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2018 19:08:26 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.4 (gnu/linux) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Aug 27 21:08:22 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1fuMs9-0002uv-MD for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 27 Aug 2018 21:08:21 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:34793 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fuMuG-0001nP-0I for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 27 Aug 2018 15:10:32 -0400 X-Received: by 2002:adf:9d1e:: with SMTP id k30-v6mr17637wre.20.1535396883237; Mon, 27 Aug 2018 12:08:03 -0700 (PDT) X-FeedAbuse: http://nntpfeed.proxad.net/abuse.pl feeded by 78.192.65.63 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!143-v6no6759094wmm.0!news-out.google.com!a22-v6ni25711wmg.0!nntp.google.com!feeder1-2.proxad.net!proxad.net!feeder1-1.proxad.net!nntpfeed.proxad.net!news.muarf.org!news.gegeweb.eu!gegeweb.org!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 31 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: onLrbz09yV+MU3RaxdbMkg.user.gioia.aioe.org Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org Mail-Copies-To: never X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.3 Cancel-Lock: sha1:IySwl8lK4v1UETme/1nxQ6ucY+w= Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:223651 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "help-gnu-emacs" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:117776 Archived-At: Rodolfo Medina wrote: > What does `A' stand for...? And foo and > bar...? And region-beginning/end...? A and B doesn't stand for anything in particular, but it can stand for a lot of things, anything that fits. Likewise with foo and bar: programmers use them sort of like x and y in algebra, but not in exactly the same way, more like telling "don't mind us, this piece of code is carrying some other point across, only formally, without us, it won't work". Sometimes foo and bar make their way into real software, because people forget to replace them after first being lazy failing to come up with a name that describes what is happening. It is most often better not to use them at all when writing real programs. Here, we use it as a way to describe the mechanism of a function and its arguments, i.e. the function itself, without any connections to what it would do in a real program in the real world. -- underground experts united http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573