how to speed up Lisp devel time

[Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com>]

> Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2024 at 5:54 AM
> From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@gnu.org>
> To: "Emanuel Berg" <incal@dataswamp.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: how to speed up Lisp devel time
>
> > From: Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org>
> > Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2024 18:16:08 +0200
> >
> > >> These all are handled by the 'p' interactive code. So all
> > >> you need is this:
> > >>
> > >> (interactive "p")
> > >
> > > Okay, that is some improvement at last.
> >
> > I spoke to soon. That is not the same as
> >
> > (interactive (if (numberp current-prefix-arg)
> >                  (list current-prefix-arg)
> >                current-prefix-arg))
>
> If you need to support a numeric optional argument, "p" is all you
> need.  Anything else is redundant over-engineering at best.
>
> > That, (interactive "p"), is the same as sending 1 on M-x, but
> > here we want it to be the default behavior. Since nothing is
> > stated explicitely.
> >
> > M-x should be default, just as (function-name) should
> > be default.
> >
> > But it should be possible to do C-u 1 M-x to set 'end' to 1.
>
> It makes no sense to have "M-x" do something different from
> "C-u 1 M-x", when the argument says how many times to do some job.
> This is why in Emacs we use this convention consistently in all
> the commands.  You are free to use other conventions in your code,
> but that's not how Emacs commands work, and we require any command
> to adhere to that convention.
>
> When you want to allow the user to specify more than a single argument
> to a command, things usually become much more complicated, so it is
> best to avoid such commands.  If you must do that, a separate prompt
> for each argument is better than tricky conventions regarding the
> value of prefix arg.

I fully agree.  Separate prompts for each argument is better, the way things
should be.