Subject: Re: bug#34781: 27.0.50; integer in pcase sometimes compared by eq

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2019 11:48:07 +0300

> From: Mattias Engdegård <[email-masked]>
> Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2019 22:51:39 +0100
> Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]

In addition to Paul's comments:

> +Since the size of fixnums varies between platforms, the new predicate
> +'portable-fixnum-p' can be used to determine whether a number is
> +a fixnum on any machine running the current Emacs version.

This entry lacks a header.  NEWS is viewed in Outline mode, so it
should have headers that start with one or more '*' characters.
Please add a header for this item, and please make it short enough to
fit on a single line.

Also, it is advisable to accompany user-visible changes with suitable
changes in documentation, in this case the ELisp manual.  If you do
provide patches for the manuals, the NEWS entry should be marked with
"+++" to indicate that all the documentation will have been updated
when the patch is pushed.

> +(defun portable-fixnum-p (object)
> +  "Return t if OBJECT is a fixnum on any machine running the current
> +Emacs version."

Suggest to rephrase:

    "Non-nil if OBJECT is a fixnum on any platform.
  The value will be nil if OBJECT is not a number, or if its value
  needs more bits than a fixnum can support on some platforms."

> +  DEFVAR_LISP ("most-positive-portable-fixnum",
> +               Vmost_positive_portable_fixnum,
> +               doc: /* The greatest integer that is represented efficiently
> +on any machine running this version of Emacs.

The first line of any doc string must not be a complete sentence.
This is because apropos commands only display the first line of the
doc string.  So I suggest to reword:

  The largest integer representable as fixnum on any platform.

> +  DEFVAR_LISP ("most-negative-portable-fixnum",
> +               Vmost_negative_portable_fixnum,
> +               doc: /* The least integer that is represented efficiently
> +on any machine running this version of Emacs.

Similarly here.

Thanks for working on this.