Re: Round-tripping key definitions

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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  > Then again, maybe we'd want to finally get rid of the conflation between
  > "control modifier + key" and "ASCII control char".  But that's harder
  > (because it affects ELisp source code, where `?\C-i` is 9 rather than
  > #x4000069,

I think the crucial requirement is that these are two different
character codes, but programs want to treat them as equivalent and
bind them both with one binding.

               so either we keep `?\C-i` as 9 and introduce a new syntax
  > for "character i with a control modifier", or we change the value and
  > risk breaking some programs (tho maybe we can auto-fix the vast
  > majority with appropriate heuristics)).

That would break a lot of old code.  Such incompatibilities are a big
problem -- worse, I think, than the disadvantages of keeping this
point unchamged.  It's not a big problem, just surprising occasionally.

  > [ BTW, I just noticed that `?\C-é` is 137, which seems like a plain bug.  ]

One can argue that it should give an error message, but barring that,
there is no better value it could give.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)