Re: Unhelpful text in C-h v search-default-mode

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hello, Juri.

On Fri, Dec 29, 2023 at 09:12:49 +0200, Juri Linkov wrote:
> > In a recent master branch Emacs, (not with -Q), from an info buffer, I
> > did C-h v search-default-mode.  The text printed in *Help* included this:

> >     Its value is
> >     #<subr F616e6f6e796d6f75732d6c616d626461_anonymous_lambda_109>
> >     Original value was nil
> >     Local in buffer *info*<3>; global value is nil

> > ..  This is quite frankly entirely unhelpful; it gives no way to find out
> > what the lambda is, in particular, no way to get to its source code.  It
> > isn't even possible to disassemble the function.

> Another example:

> 0. emacs -Q
> 1. M-x list-timers

>    *     0.1s     t show-paren-function
>    *     0.5s     t #<subr F616e6f6e796d6f75732d6c616d626461_anonymous_lambda_13>

> I wonder how users are supposed to know what function it is?
> Searching by the delay number 0.5 reveals this lambda comes from

>         (setq jit-lock-context-timer
>               (run-with-idle-timer jit-lock-context-time t
>                                    (lambda ()
>                                      (unless jit-lock--antiblink-grace-timer
>                                        (jit-lock-context-fontify)))))

The new feature I've been working on for a couple of months should fix
this problem, too.  I'm making steady progress, currently being stuck on
cl-generic.el, due to its appalling lack of documentation.

Incidentally, why do we need the long string of hex digits in the subr
names F616e....6461_anonymous_lambda_109?  These  are simply the ASCII
codes for "anonymous_lambda", and would appear to be utterly
superfluous.  They serve only to make it more difficult to use the
function name, or to talk about it, and they make the list-timers output
much wider than it need be.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).