Re: proposal to make null string handling more emacs-y

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <address@hidden>
> Cc: Steve Yegge <address@hidden>,  address@hidden
> Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:28:05 -0400
> 
> > I'm quite sure this will break gobs of existing code in Emacs.  The
> > entire display engine, for starters.
> 
> I wonder what makes you think that would introduce lots of bugs,
> and why in the display engine.

Code out there depends on nil being different from an empty string.
In the display engine, if a string is nil, that's used as a flag.

> AFAICT this error is very rarely thrown, so turning it into some other
> behavior should have very little effect, if any.

The suggestion, AFAIU, wasn't limited to error being thrown.