Re: Inadequate coding in hack-elisp-shorthands

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2021 20:35:17 +0000
> From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
> 
> In emacs -Q in the emacs-28 branch, create the following two line file,
> foobar.el, and try to load it:
> 
> ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
> (defvar foo-baz "foobar-baz")
> FOOBARELISP-SHORTHANDS: (("foo" . "foobar")))
> ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
> 
> This will throw an error, but that isn't important.
> 
> What is important is that the symbol foobar-baz is created by the
> elisp-shorthands facility.
> 
> This shouldn't happen since:
> 1/- There is no Local Variables section.
> 2/- There is no variable elisp-shorthands in that non-existent section.
> 
> The following errors are evident in hack-elisp-shorthands:
> 1/- The code doesn't check for a correctly formatted Local Variables
>   section.
> 2/- The code, even if it did check, would only check the last 3000 bytes
>   in the file.  The section can occur anywhere in the last 3000
>   CHARACTERS.
> 3/- The code doesn't do a case-sensitive search for "elisp-shorthands".
> 4/- The code doesn't check for "elisp-shorthands" being a complete
>   symbol.
> 5/- The code doesn't even check that "elisp-shorthands" is in a comment.
> 
> I would suggest that these errors be corrected.  I would also suggest
> that the entire code and documentation for this new facility be
> carefully reviewed by somebody who isn't the original author.

Thanks, but why isn't this a full-blown bug report, submitted to
debbugs?