Re: lread.c's `values' variable

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    Has anyone ever needed to look at that list?

    Isn't the information typically found in the *Messages* buffer, in the
    command history, or in the buffer where you evalled the expression
    (e.g. *scratch*).

The printed representation would be found there, but at least in theory
one could want to get at the actual Lisp object (to see if it is eq
to something else, for instance, or to modify it).

At present we don't have any convenient way to access it except to do
(nth N values).  And that has the inconvenience that the index of any
object changes by 1 each time you evaluate something.

    It is quite obvious that functions can only really look at the car of
    that list.

To make `values' conveniently useful, it would be nice to have an
interface that would show you the printed reps of the elements of the
list in a menu, let you select one of the values, and put it into some
other variable, without changing the value of `values'.  This is far
from the most important feature to add to Emacs, and I wouldn't spend
time on it myself.  But maybe someone would like to do it.