From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Alan Mackenzie Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Why "symbol's value" error about a list? Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2018 20:35:44 +0000 Message-ID: <20180205203544.GA5310@ACM> References: <83o9l6bhfs.fsf@gnu.org> <1fedc60d-35a7-4ff0-adbb-b6b8306d192f@default> <83wozu9f6r.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1517863434 1580 195.159.176.226 (5 Feb 2018 20:43:54 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2018 20:43:54 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mutt/1.7.2 (2016-11-26) Cc: Eli Zaretskii , emacs-devel@gnu.org, drew.adams@oracle.com, npostavs@users.sourceforge.net To: Richard Stallman Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Feb 05 21:43:49 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@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 1einc8-0008Go-P1 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 05 Feb 2018 21:43:44 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:34483 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eine9-0006ew-W8 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:45:50 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:44509) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eine1-0006eF-Qq for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:45:43 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eindz-0000MT-7q for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:45:41 -0500 Original-Received: from colin.muc.de ([193.149.48.1]:37948 helo=mail.muc.de) by eggs.gnu.org with smtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eindy-0000Jc-Rp for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:45:39 -0500 Original-Received: (qmail 33618 invoked by uid 3782); 5 Feb 2018 20:45:34 -0000 Original-Received: from acm.muc.de (p548C79D9.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [84.140.121.217]) by colin.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Mon, 05 Feb 2018 21:45:33 +0100 Original-Received: (qmail 5471 invoked by uid 1000); 5 Feb 2018 20:35:44 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.12 (Macallan) X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: FreeBSD 9.x [fuzzy] X-Received-From: 193.149.48.1 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:222565 Archived-At: Hello, Richard. On Sun, Feb 04, 2018 at 20:06:39 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > For example, suppose you have a Lisp program that produces the > > following error message when compiled/executed: > > Symbol's value as variable is void: 'аbbrevs-changed > Does that error message really happen? If so, how can I reproduce it? In Emacs-25.3 -Q, do M-: (message "(setq foo 'bar)") RET , followed by getting the output from *Messages* into the kill ring with M-w, followed by M-: C-y RET . You might think you are executing (setq foo 'bar). You're not. You're executing (setq foo ’bar), where the ’ is a Unicode curly quote. The error message given out is: Symbol's value as variable is void: ’bar . If you're like me, you will read that as the symbol "bar" is void, rather than the symbol "’bar" is void. This is a result of the change in `message', silently to convert ' to a curly quote, by default. Some of us were unhappy at this change and protested against it. > I understand that the character 'а' is not ASCII a. That explains why > 'аbbrevs-changed' is not known as a variable. But I'm talking about > a different issue, which has nothing to do with character coding. > Suppose it were 'foobaz', all ASCII, and we got an error such as > > Symbol's value as variable is void: 'foobaz > That still seems wrong. Again "’foobaz", not "foobaz" is the symbol, here. > If the error was that foobaz was void, the error message should not > include a quote. It should say > > Symbol's value as variable is void: foobaz Yes. > Or if the error was that 'foobaz is used instead of a symbol, the error > message should say > > Wrong type argument: symbolp, (quote foobaz) In the recent pretest, Emacs-26.0.91, when a curly quote appears at the start of a symbol, the reader rejects it, giving the error message: read--expression: Invalid read syntax: "strange quote", "'" . This is somewhat controversional, and is what the recent discussion has been about. > -- > Dr Richard Stallman > President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) > Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) > Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).