Re: Upcoming loss of usability of Emacs source files and Emacs.

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Why can't we use just \ instead of \= ?
> We can (and that's what my first proposal did), but it'll require
> changing a certain amount of existing docstrings,

Why?  [ Assuming we still accept "\=".  ]

> and some of them will look less nice as a result.

Do you have examples?

> Such as substitute-command-keys one, where we'll have to escape all
> those backslashes.

AFAICT they're already escaped (with \=), so that would not be worse, or
am I missing something?

> Adding a yet-another quoting method is not ideal either.

That's a downside, but \ is "the standard quoting method", so I think
overall it could be counted as removing an escaping method rather than
adding one.

> However, if we change \= to \ as the quoting method in
> substitute-command-keys as well, that will be less of
> a problem.

Hmm... yes, the idea is to use \ instead of \=, everywhere.

> Backward compatibility might be, but I've seen no evidence
> thus far, of \= being used anywhere outside of Emacs core.

We'd probably want to keep supporting \= for a while anyway.

>>>>> "Andreas" == Andreas Schwab <address@hidden> writes:
> But it will break doc strings that use \.

Which case are you thinking of?


        Stefan