From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Gregory Heytings Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Do shorthands break basic tooling (tags, grep, etc)? (was Re: Shorthands have landed on master) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2021 08:20:24 +0000 Message-ID: <25d8d72022b571db5291@heytings.org> References: <16338bdc2497fc51c6fb6d54ab370bfb@webmail.orcon.net.nz> <874ka5gsqa.fsf@gnus.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=us-ascii Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="12861"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: psainty@orcon.net.nz, Lars Ingebrigtsen , joaotavora@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Richard Stallman Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Thu Sep 30 10:21:58 2021 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1mVrKI-00037c-QD for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 30 Sep 2021 10:21:58 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:38992 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1mVrKH-00064r-Pa for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 30 Sep 2021 04:21:57 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:49052) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1mVrIv-0005Ak-9Z for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 30 Sep 2021 04:20:33 -0400 Original-Received: from heytings.org ([95.142.160.155]:58016) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1mVrIr-0007Ea-FX; Thu, 30 Sep 2021 04:20:31 -0400 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=heytings.org; s=20210101; t=1632990025; bh=K2jGQ8NXluwOdCUTTPNJqCuEXJbpm6nw3dJQiVDoCdk=; h=Date:From:To:cc:Subject:In-Reply-To:Message-ID:References:From; b=An8HDKwm8g1kKJC8c0+iOANfB+whRMrTtGQFunXZq5SY8uhKzqYPzBflbnOVl1e58 c3PrWgEpfbUErVLeU+OxpJaTX/tnqxDtfHIz/kXlWM8dqKnIt0Liq32W18Poz294gP OYgcOIjiGhegqhIblw3aOEvm2AiQQW4nRhTcrEkB4STXeCEYtfuGJtR9AlgR4sN/XI idcdGaTxB2+RLQui1dTy3S+nTuxjMhZloZUGQhABCwz1sFdaGoxRnUDboyhQmx7+6u L/X2wqzeQYG9uHpWn6V6qpb1bmPCWv+vOhKb2B5XGZBmMQerhfzFduuQzOquRmGg2k K6i/VEGWgtWIA== In-Reply-To: Received-SPF: pass client-ip=95.142.160.155; envelope-from=gregory@heytings.org; helo=heytings.org X-Spam_score_int: -20 X-Spam_score: -2.1 X-Spam_bar: -- X-Spam_report: (-2.1 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, DKIM_SIGNED=0.1, DKIM_VALID=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_AU=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_EF=-0.1, SPF_HELO_PASS=-0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no X-Spam_action: no action X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 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-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:275865 Archived-At: >> Yes, it'll break a lot of tooling. > > Can you report any specific problems? > A simple example: suppose you want to check which ELPA package activates tab-bar-mode. That's easy to do with "grep -R tab-bar-mode" in a clone of the ELPA repository. With symbol prefix renaming, a package author might decide to add ("tb-" . "tab-bar-") in the shorthands of the package, and "grep -R tab-bar-mode" will not show anything. Likewise for tag systems, the symbols that are recorded will possibly be different in each package, and a search for tab-bar-mode will not return occurrences of tb-mode. >> My argument was: If we want to add something along these lines, it >> should be more like Common Lisp's package system. > > That is far more complex and has deep flaws. The symbol prefix renaming > feature is much cleaner. > Indeed, but IMO only if it comes with an unambiguous textual indication that the symbol will be transformed by the Lisp reader into another symbol, for example "::" between the shorthand and the rest of the symbol. Not only will those who read the code immediately see that tb::mode is a shorthand and not a regular Elisp symbol, but it becomes much easier to instruct tools such as grep or tag systems to preprocess el files by first expanding tb::mode into tab-bar-mode.