Re: skip-chars-forward error "Invalid ISO C character class"

[storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)]

"Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com> writes:

> 
>   (skip-chars-forward "[:.,\t\n ]+")
> 
> When the line is in the *scratch* buffer, this error message will be
> generated:
> 
> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Invalid ISO C character class")


Well, unless the author actually intended to also match the characters []+
the proper form of the above call is:

   (skip-chars-forward ":.,\t\n ")

so I guess it's a bug in the code (the arg is a string not a regexp).

But the reason the error only reveals is head now is because RMS has
installed a patch to allow character classes to be specified, e.g.
   (skip-chars-forward "[:alpha:]")

The implementation is a bit brute force though, so it triggers errors
for things which clearly are not intended to be interpreted as a
character class.  E.g.

        (skip-chars-forward "[:]")


I have installed a change which checks that [:class:] has the proper
format before interpretion it as a class spec.

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk