Subject: bug#30538: Elisp manual doesn't say how to get a raw syntax descriptor of a character.

From: Alan Mackenzie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2018 20:32:33 +0000

Hello, Emacs.

The title says it all.  Actually, in the early part of the Elisp manual,
it does say that `aref' works on char-tables.  And around the syntax part
of the manual, much later, it says that syntax tables are char-tables.

This makes it far too much work for somebody to find out what to do.
Therefore I suggest the following amendment, for Emacs-26:

diff --git a/doc/lispref/syntax.texi b/doc/lispref/syntax.texi
index b37f2b22b8..585ecf760d 100644
--- a/doc/lispref/syntax.texi
+++ b/doc/lispref/syntax.texi
@@ -972,6 +972,9 @@ Syntax Table Internals
 below.  @var{matching-char}, if non-@code{nil}, specifies a matching
 character (similar to the second character in a syntax descriptor).
 
+Use @code{aref} (@pxref{Array Functions}) to get the raw syntax
+descriptor of a character, e.g. @code{(aref (syntax-table) ch)}.
+
   Here are the syntax codes corresponding to the various syntax
 classes:

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).