bug#5495: 23.1.90; symbol completion fails

[Roland Winkler]

On Mon Feb 1 2010 Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > I am having trouble with symbol completion. The lisp manual says
> > about `try-completion'
> 
> >   The value of COLLECTION must be a list of strings or symbols,
> >   an alist, an obarray, ...
> 
> That's incorrect, a list of symbols is not supported (although it
> somewhat works).

Thanks for the clarification. So my bug report refers really to this
node of the elisp manual. In particular, it says

  Symbols are converted to strings using `symbol-name'.

> It can be made to work, but then it will mysteriously break again when
> the first symbol in the list happens to be a lambda.

One could specify that lambda expressions take precedence, i.e., if
and only if (functionp collection) returns non-nil, collection will
be interpreted as a function. Otherwise a list will be interpreted
as a list of symbols (or a list of strings, etc.).

I would find that useful. But I'll be happy to give this feature
request low importance.

> Use an alist with symbols as keys, or use an obarray. Otherwise
> pass your list of symbols through (mapcar 'symbol-name ...) to
> turn it into a list of strings.

Sure.

Roland