Re: declare function/macro private

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>> No, I'm still wondering what it is you find to be different.
>> My current guess is that you fear that "--" has currently been used
>> carelessly and imposing a more "structured" meaning to it after the fact
>> will hence introduce problems, whereas your declaration would come right
>> away with an associated "precise" meaning.
> I was *so sure* I had made this clear having said it four times, but okay:
> I do not wish to impose or change anything.

I'm not sure which part of what you quoted made you think that I think
you with to impose or change anything (other than add a new
declaration, obviously).

> An optional addition. That's it. No one forces anyone to use it, just like
> we have the interactive-only declaration and no one's house burnt down.

Of course.  My participation here is just based on the fact that your
suggestion made me think about what we should do with "--".

From that stand point the two discussions are orthogonal.  They only
interact to the extent that they provide similar features so they are
somewhat redundant.

> Trying to retroactively impose some definitive meaning upon people's
> use of "--" is, as I said, the path to ruin.

I disagree.  I've been in the business of slowly changing ELisp coding
style for more than 20 years now, and while I'm not sure that what I've
proposed here to do with "--" would work well, I'm pretty sure it would
not be a path to ruin.

> Others do not necessarily know what I know, i.e. while I may know that "--"
> is a convention that means "internal" in Elisp, other people may not (or
> likely do not). I suspect many programmers use it just because they've seen
> it used in other packages. And given that Elisp does not have any explicit
> definition of what is "internal" it would make little sense to impose one
> now and say "oh well that's what we meant all along".

I think most people who don't know better won't see any difference
either after we'd introduce the new rule.  Or if they do, they'd then
learn about it and either adjust their code or ignore the warning.

> This is not and was never part of my suggestion.

Of course not.  That was my suggestion.


        Stefan