Re: Rationale behind conversion of a nil prefix arg to numeric 1

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2016 14:23:35 +0200
> From: florian@fsavigny.de (Florian v. Savigny)
> 
> Naively, I used the numeric conversion of the prefix arg, i.e.
> 
>    (interactive "p")
> 
> which passes the prefix arg converted to a number. However, if I call
> the function with no prefix argument, which is, expectedly, nil in raw
> form, it converts this to the number 1. (This is what
> `prefix-numeric-value' does, as explained in the docstring.)
> 
> While I understand that this is how it is done, I am quite puzzled
> about the logic behind this. It would seem intuitive to me to convert
> nil to either the number 0 or, again, nil, but never to the number
> 1. And practically, converting nil to 1 has the consequence that
> calling the command with no prefix arg:
> 
>    M-x command
> 
> is exactly the same as calling it with a prefix arg of 1:
> 
>    C-u 1 M-x command
> 
> because the prefix arg converted to a number is 1 in both cases, which
> reduces the number of possibilities of calling the command by one.
> 
> I can circumvent this (and get the behaviour that I would expect) by
> writing the function with
> 
>    (if current-prefix-arg (prefix-numeric-value current-prefix-arg))
> 
> in an explicit interactive list, but I am still wondering about the
> rationale of representing nil as the number one. Does this make sense,
> or is it useful, in some way?

Yes.  Most commands use the argument as a repeat count, so having it
default to one makes perfect sense.