From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Richard M. Stallman" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Bugs in newly added completion capabilities. Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:03:08 -0400 Message-ID: References: <200506280227.j5S2Rln23310@raven.dms.auburn.edu> <200506290350.j5T3o7c25749@raven.dms.auburn.edu> <200506300229.j5U2TrL01627@raven.dms.auburn.edu> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1120190339 10054 80.91.229.2 (1 Jul 2005 03:58:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 03:58:59 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org, teirllm@dms.auburn.edu, miles@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Jul 01 05:58:48 2005 Return-path: Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DoCfr-000668-OO for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 01 Jul 2005 05:58:44 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DoCoF-0004Aj-2j for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:07:23 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1DoCmy-0003gl-CK for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:06:04 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1DoCmw-0003fU-61 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:06:02 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DoCmv-0003f6-LV for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:06:01 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.164] (helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1DoCqt-0003Jr-Sw for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:10:07 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.34) id 1DoCk8-0000fV-8K; Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:03:08 -0400 Original-To: Stefan Monnier In-reply-to: (message from Stefan Monnier on Thu, 30 Jun 2005 13:42:15 -0400) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:39996 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:39996 I don't like the idea of adding "" at the beginning of a completion table. Here I have a good reason, which is that it changes the behavior: (try-completion "" '("aaa" "aab" "aac")) => "aa" (try-completion "" '("" "aaa" "aab" "aac")) => "" Oops. I suggested adding "" because I thought it would not change the results. Since that is not true, adding "" is not a solution. The only real solution would be to add a first element that's neither a symbol nor a string, nor a cons cell whose car is a symbol or a string. Such as 0 or []. That is sort of ugly. It would be cleaner to say that lists of symbols can't be used at all. As you've said, that would be no great loss. Let's recall how this came up: as a side effect of the change to allow symbols as the car of cons cells in an alist. We could allow symbols when they come from the car of an element, and not allow them when they don't come from there. Any objections?