Subject: Re: bug#25461: Missing doc strings for "," and ",@".

From: Michael Heerdegen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2017 02:44:28 +0100

Alan Mackenzie <[email-masked]> writes:

> I don't expect the typical novice Elisp hacker cares about such nice
> distinctions.  She can get a doc string for `, so why not one for , or
> ,@?

' and #' also "don't have a docstring".  That ` "has a docstring" is
just coincidence - because the reader transforms

  `expr

to

  (` expr)

and the symbol ` has an associated symbol-function.

FWIW when I first saw `, , and ,@, it looked strange enough to me to
open the manual, because the syntax seemed so unusual that I believed
that I missed an essential part of knowledge about Elisp.  At least this
is what I think happened...

But I agree that some people might try C-h f on any of these, and we
would not all die if we would show something useful in this case.  We
could just say that C-f explains symbol functions and "reader macros"
and the thing would still be consistent.

OTOH, I think that saying anything about `pcase' there would be a bad
idea.

Michael.