From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Kevin Rodgers Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Is it necessary to reset or clear the global variables ? Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 21:44:51 -0700 Message-ID: References: <2f54fa25-64b1-4729-9e5a-326c2ce57152@j21g2000vba.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1292388328 30428 80.91.229.12 (15 Dec 2010 04:45:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 04:45:28 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Dec 15 05:45:22 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PSjEv-0001Fr-D0 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:45:21 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:39113 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PSjEt-00037i-FG for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:45:19 -0500 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=38989 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PSjEX-00036i-Px for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:45:00 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1PSjEW-0005iY-S4 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:44:57 -0500 Original-Received: from lo.gmane.org ([80.91.229.12]:60271) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1PSjEW-0005iI-MU for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:44:56 -0500 Original-Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PSjEV-00019C-Jl for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:44:55 +0100 Original-Received: from c-24-8-96-241.hsd1.co.comcast.net ([24.8.96.241]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:44:55 +0100 Original-Received: from kevin.d.rodgers by c-24-8-96-241.hsd1.co.comcast.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:44:55 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 29 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: c-24-8-96-241.hsd1.co.comcast.net User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101207 Thunderbird/3.1.7 In-Reply-To: <2f54fa25-64b1-4729-9e5a-326c2ce57152@j21g2000vba.googlegroups.com> X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:77515 Archived-At: On 11/26/10 6:39 PM, Fren Zeee wrote: > Friends, > > I am trying to modify or improve an existing lisp function written by > myself a few years ago. I have observed that when I run it on the test > data after some modification, it appears to run because the global > variables have old value and some regular expression or result did not > produce a nil or did produce a nil which resulted in the failure of > the function to die or crash during execution. > > A standard method is to reset all global variables. > > As a newbie, I ask you to provide me with advice on what is a good > practice. If you do not need to persist state across calls to the function, do not use global variables. Passing state information to the function via its arguments is better than accessing it via global variables. > Franz Xe > > P.S. Is the word persistence an accurate term to describe this > disease ? Persistence is neither diseased nor healthy. -- Kevin Rodgers Denver, Colorado, USA