Re: print-circle and describe-variable

[Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>]

"Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:

> Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>> But we do believe that print-circle makes it possible to print out
>>> recursive structures, or? And we do not believe that it disturbs printing
>>> out non-recursive structures (except that it gets a bit slower), or?
>>
>> Actually, I believe it does affect printing non-circular structures in more
>> ways than just by making it slower.
>>
>> Try (let ((print-circle t) (toto (list 2))) (prin1 (list toto toto)))
>>
>> In some cases, this is a good feature, but in many other cases it can be
>> very confusing.
>
>
> Interesting, but is not that just another bug?

Nope.  When print-circle is on, the printer takes note of shared
substructures.  It's just that in this case, taking note of shared
substructure obfuscates the value.