Re: [Emacs-diffs] /srv/bzr/emacs/trunk r109327: Generalize INTERNAL_FIELD between buffers, keyboards and frames.

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

On 08/03/2012 01:31 AM, Dmitry Antipov wrote:
> why (F|W)VARs are so bad but (B|K)VARs are OK?

The short answer is they're all bad.  :-)

FVAR is bad partly because it has the syntax of a C function,
but not the semantics; it cannot be implemented as a function.
How about if we compromise by switching to functional notation?
That should be easier to read.  That is, instead of this:

  return XFRAME (frame)->buffer_list;

or this:

  return FVAR (XFRAME (frame), buffer_list);

we write this:

  return frame_buffer_list (XFRAME (frame));

Also, instead instead of this:

  f->buffer_list = Fcons (buf, Qnil);

or this:

  FVAR (f, buffer_list) = Fcons (buf, Qnil);

we write this:

  set_frame_buffer_list (f, Fcons (buf, Qnil));

We needn't use capital letters for the functions, since they
can be implemented as true functions (inline, so that the
code is just as fast as before).  This will help readability
too.

Doing this will give us the opportunity to instrument all accesses
to the buffer_list member of frames.  It's a bit more complicated
in the .h file, but it makes the rest of the code easier to read
than FVAR does.

Similarly for WVAR, etc.