Subject: RE: bug#31125: 26; (emacs) `Highlight Interactively'

From: Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2018 21:37:50 -0700 (PDT)

> > (It does somehow seem to bad that someone can read the
> > entire Emacs manual without knowing anything about
> > Lisp symbols, including that there is such a critter.)
> 
> Actually, "Symbol Search", which is where you get if you select
> "symbol search" from the completion list popped up by "i search TAB",
> does try to tell what is a symbol in language-independent terms.

Yes, I'm aware of that.  And that additional, syntactic
meaning of "symbol" in Emacs jargon has little-to-nothing
to do with Lisp symbols.

A reader won't learn anything about Lisp symbols by
reading that node.  On the contrary: s?he will instead
mislearn something untrue that suggests it is about Lisp
symbols but is not.

A Lisp symbol is not just "a source code token", nor are
Lisp-mode "source code tokens" necessarily Lisp symbols.
Using `forward-symbol' or "symbol search" in Lisp does
not move across or find Lisp symbols.
 
It's too bad that Emacs chose to appropriate the term
"symbol" for that other, essentially unrelated meaning.
But it did.  It's a shame because Lisp is something
really important to Emacs, and so to Emacs users.  And
symbols are something important to Lisp.

This is what Lisp symbols are about (though they have
additional characteristics):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_(programming)