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Re: Change stars as read-hide-char
From: |
Colin Baxter |
Subject: |
Re: Change stars as read-hide-char |
Date: |
Mon, 30 Jul 2018 12:14:37 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/26.1 (gnu/linux) |
Dear Robert
>>>>> Robert Pluim <address@hidden> writes:
> Colin Baxter <address@hidden> writes:
>>>>>>> Robert Pluim <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>> > Colin Baxter <address@hidden> writes: >> My apologies for
>> posting here, I can't get posting rights at >>
>> gmane.emacs.help. My `return-confirmation' emails get bounced at
>> >> that news-group.
>> >>
>> >> The development emacs-27 version recently changed the default
>> >> character seen when entering a password from `.' to `*'. I
>> want >> to get back to the old default, but
>> >>
>> >> (let (read-hide-char) "?.")
>> >>
>>
>> > 'let' specifies a list of variable bindings, and you want the >
>> character '.', not a string containing '?' and '.', so itʼs:
>>
>> > (let ((read-hide-char ?. )) (message "%c" read-hide-char))
>>
>> Unfortunately
>>
>> (let ((read-hide-char ?. )) (message "%c" read-hide-char))
>>
>> also doesn't work. It gives the error
>>
>> Wrong type argument: characterp, "?."
>>
>> as soon as I enter a password. The same error occurs if I use
>> `emacs -q'. Could this be a bug?
> Hmm. Could you show a full transcript of what youʼre doing? Donʼt
> forget that the let-binding is only valid within the let, not for
> the entire session. If you want it to valid all the time you'll
> need to do
> (setq read-hide-char ?.)
Ok, that explains things I think. At the beginning, I wanted to set `.'
as the read-hide-char in my emacs-init file, but the doc string for
read-hide-char says it should never be set globally. I took that to mean
never to set via a `setq'. This seemed to be confirmed in comments of
the lisp/subr.el file, where using a let-bind is suggested. Hence my
efforts at writing a `let' to my emacs-init, which maybe were a little
naive.
The (setq read-hide-char ?.) does indeed work, and seems to do so
without creating errors elsewhere. So I'll leave it in my ~/.emacs for
now. However, I am now curious as to what the sentence, `This variable
should never be set globally.' means in the doc-string for
`read-hide-char'. Perhaps the doc-string could be amplified slightly?
Thank you very much for your help.
Best wishes,
Colin.