Re: Dialling down symbol escaping slightly?

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Or rather -- that's what I was kind of asking -- whether doing what I
> described would break the Lisp reader in any way.  I don't think so, but
> there may be cases I'm not aware of.

There was the `.?' case, so it's not just `.'.  So how about the
following -- it's more conservative than originally proposed, and leaves
open the possibility of introducing other future syntaxes starting with
a dot.

diff --git a/src/print.c b/src/print.c
index 8cce8a1ad8..3ede628b09 100644
--- a/src/print.c
+++ b/src/print.c
@@ -2180,6 +2180,11 @@ print_object (Lisp_Object obj, Lisp_Object printcharfun, 
bool escapeflag)
                          && !NILP (string_to_number (p, 10, &len))
                          && len == size_byte);
 
+       /* We don't escape "." or "?" (unless they're the first
+          character in the symbol name).  */
+       if (*p == '?' || *p == '.')
+         confusing = true;
+
        if (! NILP (Vprint_gensym)
            && !SYMBOL_INTERNED_IN_INITIAL_OBARRAY_P (obj))
          print_c_string ("#:", printcharfun);
@@ -2201,8 +2206,8 @@ print_object (Lisp_Object obj, Lisp_Object printcharfun, 
bool escapeflag)
              {
                if (c == '\"' || c == '\\' || c == '\''
                    || c == ';' || c == '#' || c == '(' || c == ')'
-                   || c == ',' || c == '.' || c == '`'
-                   || c == '[' || c == ']' || c == '?' || c <= 040
+                   || c == ',' || c == '`'
+                   || c == '[' || c == ']' || c <= 040
                    || c == NO_BREAK_SPACE
                    || confusing)
                  {

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no