Re: reading the C source of Emacs

[kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann)]

Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de> writes:

> Hmm, I haven't thought of that. But it could be an idea. Many of my
> wishes are far above my head at the moment, but maybe I could find or
> invent something which is sufficently limited to play a bit with it
> and to get a feeling for it. Thanks you.

I don't understand that "above your head" part.  Previously, you
wanted to grok all of the C code.  Now you say grokking only a small
bit to implement something is too difficult.

Well.  Don't be offended by the previous paragraph.  I was trying to
be provocative.  Of course, if what you have in mind is inherently
difficult to do (how to extend doctor.el to pass the Turing test,
say), then just grokking all of the C code of Emacs is easier.  But
if what you have in mind is not inherently so difficult, then I
believe that having something to focus on to guide you through the
code will help a lot.

The feature you want to implement can be your guide through the source
code.

FWIW, C is quite small a language.  So it's not difficult to master
all of the syntax of it, except for some dark areas best left to the
real gurus.  The operator precedence is part of that dark area, and
also the syntax for specifying certain data types.

I recommoned the cdecl program:

cdecl> declare f as pointer to function (int) returning pointer to char
char *(*f)(int )

It accurately describes itself as a translation tool from gibberish
to English and vice versa :-)
-- 
Ambibibentists unite!