Subject: bug#11983: 24.1; Electric-command-loop broken?

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 08:09:41 -0400

>> > (unwind-protect
>> >     (catch 'return-tag
>> >       (Electric-command-loop 'return-tag))
>> >   (cleanup-form))
>> But in which way is this different from `recursive-edit'?
> I do not know much about recursive-edit. How would you use it as a
> replacement for the above to be sure that after leaving
> recursive-edit cleanup-form is always executed?

    (unwind-protect
        (recursive-edit)
      (cleanup-form))

>> It seems that it requires a fair bit of extra surrounding code to
>> use it right. E.g. electric-buffer-list is buggy because it lacks
>> this extra code: after popping up the electric-buffer-list, you
>> can select some other window and work there, but the behavior is
>> then all messed up.
> The amount of protection provided by an Electric-command-loop
> depends on the surrounding code (save-excursion,
> save-window-excursion, etc.)

The issue is not that the buffer is not reset when you return from
electric-buffer-list, but that during electric-buffer-list if you select
some other window you do not exit electric-buffer-list and the keys end
up behaving weird (e.g. typing "c" in a normal buffer will insert "c"
and then move to EOB or something like that).  Once you exit from
electric-buffer-list, things are back to normal.

> I believe that the intended usage pattern of Electric-command-loop
> does not include too wild things such as selecting other windows.  Or
> phrased differently: of course, you can always do whatever you
> like.  But only cleanup-form is definitely evaluated at the end.

What I'm saying is that it's tricky to use Electric-command-loop without
introducing bugs because Electric-command-loop presumes that all
operations will stay within the current buffer, but it does not (help
to) try to enforce it.  So it's a poor API.

        Stefan