Subject: bug#19932: 25.0.50; doc string of `elisp--eval-last-sexp'

From: Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2015 09:05:14 -0800 (PST)

> > Of course.  And "private" means nothing in the context of Emacs Lisp.
> 
> It means whatever we want it to mean when we use the word. I think we
> all (more or less) understand what it means in the current context,
> don't we ?

Nope.  You won't find it anywhere in the Emacs or Elisp doc, I'll bet.
Or even in the source code (unless perhaps in some C code somewhere,
as a comment).

Use of the term here, by Dmitry, is new in the context of Emacs, AFAIK.
I'll bet that even if you search bug reports and emacs-devel threads you
won't find that term used.

(And "internal" (also nebulous/dubious in the context of Emacs) is not
the same as "private".)

"Private", for software, is typically about encapsulation/visibility
and modules.  You could make a case that a notion of such privacy
(importing, exporting etc.) exists in Common Lisp, wrt its packages.
But no such module system exists for Elisp.

If/when we add a module system to Elisp, then we can perhaps speak of
things being "private".  And even then the notion would no doubt be
relative, as it is in, say, Common Lisp.