Re: defvaralias

[Luc Teirlinck <teirllm@dms.auburn.edu>]

Stefan Monnier wrote:

   What's wrong with (defvaralias 'var1 'var2 "var1 docstring") ?

Nothing.  What we are struggling with is an unintentional misfeature
whereby if var1 already has a docstring then after
`(defvaralias 'var1 'var2)' it keeps its docstring instead of getting
var2's docstring as intended and currently documented.  This really
never should matter, as it can only occur if var1 has two competing
definitions, a defvar or defcustom and a defvaralias, which should not
happen.  My example with the deliberately bad code was meant to
illustrate the misfeature.

I proposed a small trivial patch to eliminate the misfeature, but
Richard said that this constituted an incompatible change and that we
should document the feature and tell people not to use it since the
feature will be eliminated in Emacs 23.  (I have a hard time
understanding why this is an incompatible change, since the function
defvaralias in _new_ in Emacs 22, and the behavior only can occur if
there already is a bug anyway.)

Sincerely,

Luc.