By the way, I understand the problem easily now. The symbol 'dbus' has the
prefix 'db' and when the example file is read 'dbus' becomes
'cl-destructuring-bindus'. This happens at read-time well before evaluation
or byte-compilation.

It happens to occur inside a 'load' or 'require' form (didn't check), but
it's completely unrelated to that operation specifically. The file intended
to be loaded is completely isolated. This is just a misunderstanding of
what shorthands were designed for and how they work. If anything is missing
in the manual, feel free to add.

João Távora

On Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 11:52 João Távora <joaotavora@gmail.com> wrote:

> Here's the reply I meant to send to the tracker but sent to Eli only on
> accident:
>
> Shorthands are read at file read-time and specified exclusively as
> per-file variables. So I don't understand this about inheritance from load.
> Also they were designed to abbreviate prefixes, not full symbol names, so
> the db idea is probably not going to work. As far as I remember, these
> things were well explained in the manual...
>
> João
>
> On Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 07:41 Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>> > From: "David J. Rosenbaum" <djr7c4@gmail.com>
>> > Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2025 16:58:06 -0700
>> >
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > I am using read-symbol-shorthands to alias db to
>> > cl-destructuring-bind. It works but causes problems when I load a file
>> > containing a symbol that starts with db. For example, one can use emacs
>> -Q
>> > with the following file.
>> >
>> > ================================================================
>> > (require 'tramp-gvfs)
>> >
>> > ;; Local Variables:
>> > ;; read-symbol-shorthands: (("db" . "cl-destructuring-bind"))
>> > ;; End:
>> > ================================================================
>> >
>> > To reproduce, save the above and load it with M-x load-file. This
>> > results in the following error.
>> >
>> > ================================================================
>> > Loading /home/david/tmp/read-symbol-example.el (source)...
>> > byte-code: Cannot open load file: No such file or directory,
>> cl-destructuring-bindus
>> > ================================================================
>> >
>> > The problem seems to be that tramp-gvfs requires dbus and db is being
>> > replaced with cl-destructuring-bind. IMO, loaded files should not
>> inherit
>> > shorthands from files that require them since those shorthands are only
>> > valid for that particular file.
>>
>> Thanks, I hope João (CC'ed) will have some ideas or suggestions.
>>
>