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Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y
From: |
Miles Bader |
Subject: |
Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y |
Date: |
Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:24:05 +0900 |
Jeremiah Dodds <address@hidden> writes:
>>> I believe this is because it seems that the "uh-oh i got a nil when I
>>> expected a string" error commonly happens on emacs startup, confusing
>>> new users, presumably after loading some big bunch of elisp.
>>
>> Does it? I don't think I've _ever_ seen that error at startup (though
>> I've certainly had errors during startup)...
>
> It's happened to me enough times over the course of the decade or so
> that I've been using emacs to remember it. I know that the first few
> times it happened, I was pretty green and got really confused for a
> while. Nowadays, I know how to figure out wtf is going on.
Startup is typically a particularly intense period of elisp execution
in a short period of time, so it's not surprising if errors are more
noticeable there, and particularly annoying, because they often leave
Emacs in an uncertain state.
But:
(1) This particular type of error (nil when string expected) is just
as, or even more, likely to occur over the rest of Emacs'
execution.
(2) Many other types of errors (whether bugs or transient errors
because of e.g. environmental issues or something [can't open some
file, network down, ...]) can occur during startup
So there doesn't really seem to be all that much correlation between
what Steve was complaining about and startup. To the extent his
complaint is valid, it's a general issue, not a "startup issue."
Moreover, if Emacs is clumsy at handling errors during startup (and I
agree that it is), that's a problem that should be addressed generally
in the startup mechanism, not by bandaids on only vaguely related
areas.
In other words, these these things look largely orthogonal.
[If this particular bandaid were harmless maybe it should be added
anyway, as a stop-gap to a more proper solution -- but it isn't
harmless, at least when applied generally; in certain cases, it may
be, of course.]
-Miles
--
`Life is a boundless sea of bitterness'
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, (continued)
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, Miles Bader, 2012/04/25
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, Andreas Schwab, 2012/04/25
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, Juanma Barranquero, 2012/04/25
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, Steve Yegge, 2012/04/26
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, Miles Bader, 2012/04/26
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, Steve Yegge, 2012/04/26
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, Miles Bader, 2012/04/26
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, Jeremiah Dodds, 2012/04/26
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, Miles Bader, 2012/04/26
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, Jeremiah Dodds, 2012/04/27
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y,
Miles Bader <=
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, Thien-Thi Nguyen, 2012/04/27
- Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y, Nix, 2012/04/27
- Better startup error handling (was: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y), Stefan Monnier, 2012/04/27
- Re: Better startup error handling, Nix, 2012/04/28
- Re: Better startup error handling, Stefan Monnier, 2012/04/28
- Re: Better startup error handling, David Engster, 2012/04/28
- RE: Better startup error handling, Drew Adams, 2012/04/28
- Re: Better startup error handling, Stefan Monnier, 2012/04/28
- Re: Better startup error handling, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen, 2012/04/28
- Re: Better startup error handling, Christian Lynbech, 2012/04/30