Re: Face for literal numbers.

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hello, Ergus.

On Sun, Sep 08, 2019 at 04:41:46 +0200, Ergus wrote:
> Hi I have seen that vim provides a color for the literal numbers in
> prog-modes. I was looking for something similar en emacs and
> surprisingly there is nothing within emacs or at least in elpa. The only
> similar (fully functional) package is in melpa:

> https://github.com/Fanael/highlight-numbers

> Could we provide some basic support for this without depending of
> melpa. Such simple functionalities must be at least in elpa right?

I'm against such a feature.  "Because vim has it" doesn't seem like a
sufficient justification.

I'm against such a feature because it would be complicated.  All of the
following would need to get the new face:
    5
    -5
    0x27
    0xffff'ffff       /* in C++ Mode */
    'a'               /* in C Mode, etc. */
    ?a                ; Emacs Lisp Mode

The last two of these would be controversial: should an C or Elisp
literal character count as a number for this purpose or not?

We could spend quite a lot of time bikeshedding about this proposed
feature.  Do we need it?  I don't think we do.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).