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From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@elta.co.il>
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Subject: Re: What does the coding system nil mean?
Date: 26 Jan 2004 19:26:33 +0200
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> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> From: Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com>
> Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 16:20:22 +0100
> >
> > It's a coding system in the sense that every primitive that accepts
> > a coding system symbol also accepts nil.
> 
> But it's not transparent, i.e. some functions behave differently if
> you use nil rather than a real coding system.

That's true, but what I said is still true as well.

> > IMHO, it's no more odd than this:
> >
> >    M-: (listp nil) RET => t
> 
> I would find it a lot more odd if (listp ()) did not return t -- nil
> is the empty list, after all.

No, nil is also a symbol.