Re: Best way to detect font-lock mode is on?

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

>> syntax-ppss is supposed to automatically flush the (relevant part of)
>> the cache after any buffer modification.  The only exceptions are when
>> the buffer is modified in a context where inhibit-modification-hooks is
>> set (e.g. font-lock-syntactic-keywords).
> hmm, that is interesting. I was getting a problem where characters were
> being incorrectly classified as comments when I ran syntax-ppss if I
> didn't also run syntax-ppss-flush-cache before calling syntax-ppss, but
> the characters were not being fontified as comments. If font-lock is
> using the same mechanism, I would have expected more consistency

Indeed.

> - must be something else going on.

My point exactly.  If you can come up with a recipe that reproduces it,
we can probably help track down the origin of the problem.

> Ah, must have missed that - didn't realise there was a local variable
> called font-lock-mode. Much better solution. thanks.

(Almost) all minor modes have both a function and a variable of the same
name, where the variable stores the state (on/off) of the mode.
Check the Minor mode section in the Elisp manual.


        Stefan