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From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Cc: Aurelien Aptel <aaptel@suse.com>
Subject: Quoting t and nil in docstrings (was: [Emacs-diffs] master b952385: Revert "Fix typo in add-hook doc string")
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2019 08:12:04 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <jwvzhr76959.fsf-monnier+emacs@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20190207085734.B17CF2047A@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org> ("Aurélien Aptel"'s message of "Thu,  7 Feb 2019 03:57:34 -0500 (EST)")

>     Revert "Fix typo in add-hook doc string"
[...]
> -This makes the hook buffer-local, and it makes it a member of the
> +This makes the hook buffer-local, and it makes t a member of the

This is as good an opportunity as any to question our long-standing
convention that the symbols `nil` and `t` are treated specially in
docstrings in the sense that we don't surround them with the customary
`...'.

FWIW, I don't find this exception to be beneficial here, nor in cases
like:

    `foo' means ...
    `bar' means ...
    nil   means ...
    t     means ...

Or when a sentence starts with "nil" (where the lack of capital letter
looks like a typo).

I think we could at least change our convention to say that nil and
t don't have to be quoted rather than to say that they should not
be quoted.


        Stefan



       reply	other threads:[~2019-02-07 13:12 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <20190207085733.4723.6852@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org>
     [not found] ` <20190207085734.B17CF2047A@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org>
2019-02-07 13:12   ` Stefan Monnier [this message]
2019-02-07 13:30     ` Quoting t and nil in docstrings Robert Pluim
2019-02-07 14:52     ` Quoting t and nil in docstrings (was: [Emacs-diffs] master b952385: Revert "Fix typo in add-hook doc string") Drew Adams
2019-02-08  3:19     ` Richard Stallman

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