bug#25441: 26.0.50; Can't autocomplete symbol names ending in ?

bug#25441: 26.0.50; Can't autocomplete symbol names ending in ?

[Philipp Stephani]

In *scratch*, write

(defun foo? ())

and hit C-j to evaluate the definition.  Then, try to display the help
screen of foo? using C-h f foo? RET.  The minibuffer won't let you enter
? or auto-complete foo to foo?, even though ? can be part of a symbol.
Escaping the ? with a backslash also doesn't work.

This is especially annoying for libraries containing many Scheme-style
predicates, such as 'f' and 's'.


In GNU Emacs 26.0.50.28 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.10.8)
 of 2017-01-13 built on localhost
Repository revision: d018843e0e8065b1c9de9474521db069e1aa0025
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11501000
System Description:	Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Recent messages:
For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.

Configured using:
 'configure --with-modules --enable-checking
 --enable-check-lisp-object-type 'CFLAGS=-ggdb3 -O0''

Configured features:
XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG SOUND GSETTINGS NOTIFY GNUTLS FREETYPE XFT ZLIB
TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 MODULES

Important settings:
  value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

Major mode: Lisp Interaction

Minor modes in effect:
  tooltip-mode: t
  global-eldoc-mode: t
  electric-indent-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  tool-bar-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Load-path shadows:
None found.

Features:
(shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message subr-x puny seq byte-opt gv
bytecomp byte-compile cl-extra help-mode cconv cl-loaddefs pcase cl-lib
dired dired-loaddefs format-spec rfc822 mml easymenu mml-sec
password-cache epa derived epg epg-config gnus-util rmail rmail-loaddefs
mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils
mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr
mail-utils time-date mule-util tooltip eldoc electric uniquify
ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel term/x-win x-win
term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe
tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode elisp-mode lisp-mode
prog-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch timer select
scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core
term/tty-colors frame cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang
vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932
hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic
chinese composite charscript case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help
simple abbrev obarray minibuffer cl-preloaded nadvice loaddefs button
faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64
format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable
backquote inotify dynamic-setting system-font-setting
font-render-setting move-toolbar gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty
make-network-process emacs)

Memory information:
((conses 16 97756 7990)
 (symbols 48 20220 1)
 (miscs 40 331 131)
 (strings 32 18024 4482)
 (string-bytes 1 592939)
 (vectors 16 14091)
 (vector-slots 8 472914 7079)
 (floats 8 181 13)
 (intervals 56 218 0)
 (buffers 976 12)
 (heap 1024 20514 959))

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bug#25441: 26.0.50; Can't autocomplete symbol names ending in ?

[Andreas Schwab]

On Jan 13 2017, Philipp Stephani <p.stephani2@gmail.com> wrote:

> and hit C-j to evaluate the definition.  Then, try to display the help
> screen of foo? using C-h f foo? RET.  The minibuffer won't let you enter
> ? or auto-complete foo to foo?, even though ? can be part of a symbol.
> Escaping the ? with a backslash also doesn't work.

Use C-q to insert any character.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
GPG Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

bug#25441: 26.0.50; Can't autocomplete symbol names ending in ?

[Philipp Stephani]

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Philipp Stephani <p.stephani2@gmail.com> schrieb am Fr., 13. Jan. 2017 um
19:04 Uhr:

>
> In *scratch*, write
>
> (defun foo? ())
>
> and hit C-j to evaluate the definition.  Then, try to display the help
> screen of foo? using C-h f foo? RET.  The minibuffer won't let you enter
> ? or auto-complete foo to foo?, even though ? can be part of a symbol.
>

I've just found that the Emacs manual documents this behavior (? prints a
list of possible completions). Given that ? can only have one function, and
the current one does make sense, this behavior is rather a design choice
than a bug. Closing.

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bug#25441: 26.0.50; Can't autocomplete symbol names ending in ?

[Noam Postavsky]

tag 25441 notabug
quit

On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 1:07 PM, Philipp Stephani <p.stephani2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Philipp Stephani <p.stephani2@gmail.com> schrieb am Fr., 13. Jan. 2017 um
> 19:04 Uhr:
>>
>>
>> In *scratch*, write
>>
>> (defun foo? ())
>>
>> and hit C-j to evaluate the definition.  Then, try to display the help
>> screen of foo? using C-h f foo? RET.  The minibuffer won't let you enter
>> ? or auto-complete foo to foo?, even though ? can be part of a symbol.
>
>
> I've just found that the Emacs manual documents this behavior (? prints a
> list of possible completions). Given that ? can only have one function, and
> the current one does make sense, this behavior is rather a design choice
> than a bug. Closing.

For the record, this can be changed by unbinding
`minibuffer-completion-help' from `minibuffer-local-completion-map':

(define-key minibuffer-local-completion-map "?" nil)

bug#25441: 26.0.50; Can't autocomplete symbol names ending in ?

[Drew Adams]

> I've just found that the Emacs manual documents this behavior
> (? prints a list of possible completions).

Yes.  It's a really dumb design, IMHO.  I've argued for years
now that characters such as SPC and ? and C-j (newline) should
be self-inserting during completion.

After several decades, SPC was finally made self-inserting for
file-name completion (only).  Progress is slow...

Completion - ESPECIALLY `completing-read' as opposed to
`read-file-name' - is completely _general_.  There should be
no assumption that completion candidates do not contain spaces
or question marks or newline chars.  That's just silly (IMHO).

And making users use `C-q' to insert a space char is akin to
medieval torture - because it is completely unnecessary.