Re: --eval

[Jeremy Maitin-Shepard <jeremy@jeremyms.com>]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

> Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org> writes:
>>> Uh, -f was a typo.  I really meant --eval in my example.
>> 
>> BTW, a pity that Emacs doesn't provide a short option for the `--eval'
>> command line argument!
>> 
>> By analogy with `--funcall' that have the corresponding `-f',
>> the short option for `--eval' and `--execute' would be `-e'.
>> 
>> Even though startup.el currently treats `-e' as a shorthand of `-funcall',
>> it seems that such use of `-e' is obsolete and we are free to reassign it
>> to `--eval' and `--execute' because the manual doesn't document it:

> Deprecating -e is ok with me, but a potentially dangerous command may
> well be spelled explicitly.

Potentially dangerous?  Evaluating is hardly something that is
safe-guarded anywhere in emacs.  Furthermore, unlike a key binding that
might accidentally be hit and do something unexpected, it is highly
unlikely to perform some harmful action when something completely
different was intended.

Most importantly, if -e is typed by mistake, the argument will almost
certain not be a valid lisp expression, and even if it is, it almost
certainly won't be a lisp expression that results in a function call.

-- 
Jeremy Maitin-Shepard