Re: Why don't let bound values die?

[Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 11:52 PM, Stefan Monnier
<monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>> When accessing this menu item a temporary command symbol is set up (if
>> I understand this correctly), something like menu-function-21.
>
> No, this symbol is setup when the menu is defined.

Thanks. Learning. So that was a bad assumption by me. (Did not think
about uninterned symbols so I thought it was let bound.)

>> I tried to avoid adding such symbols like menu-function-21 to the
>> history list.
>
> One way is to check whether they're interned in `obarray'.
>
>> I thought it would be gone if I looked for it in a
>> run-with-idle-timer timer, but it is not.
>
> I have no clue whatsoever what you mean by "looked for it in
> a run-with-idle-timer".  Then again, I have no idea why you say "let
> bound" in the title, so I'm clearly missing something.

Yes, that is because you are not understanding my misunderstanding correctly ;-)

I just missed that it was defined by make-symbol. (Easy for me to do
since I have not fully understood how such symbols are handled.)

>> I do not understand why and would be glad for an explanation.
>
> Why what?
>
>> (I fixed it by saving the symbol name and checking for it with
>> intern-soft.)
>
> That means checking that it's interned in `obarray', so it sounds like
> a good solution.

Thanks, you have given me most of the explanation I needed to understand.

I think I still do not know exactly what an uninterned symbol is, but
I guess it is something that can not be looked up, just somehow
accessed directly. But it still has a name and I wonder why.