GNU bug report logs - #37747
An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp (eintr) - Texinfo documentation error

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Lata BL <lbennettleaver <at> yahoo.co.uk>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp (eintr) - Texinfo
 documentation error
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:11:29 +0000 (UTC)

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

 Package: emacs

I am reading the Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp (eintr) documentation in Emacs 26.3 in Info mode

I have encountered 2 possible errors so far:-
Error 1) I am confused as to whether there are 3 or 4 "special forms" in chapter 3.
Is 'defun' treated as a macro or a special form or both of those?

3.7 The ‘if’ Special Form
=========================
A third special form, in addition to ‘defun’ and ‘let’, is the
conditional ‘if’.

<<< The number of special forms is later contradicted in 3.10 as follows >>>

3.10 ‘save-excursion’
=====================
The ‘save-excursion’ function is the third and final special form that
we will discuss in this chapter.


Error 2) Possible extra closing parenthesis prevents evaluation with C-x C-e
3.7.1 The ‘type-of-animal’ Function in Detail
---------------------------------------------
...
  In the ‘type-of-animal’ function, the code for the ‘if’ looks like
this:

    (if (equal characteristic "fierce")
        (message "It is a tiger!")))

thank you, Mark Bennett-Leaver  

[Message part 2 (text/html, inline)]

Message #10 received at 37747-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Lata BL <lbennettleaver <at> yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: 37747-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#37747: An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp (eintr) -
 Texinfo documentation error
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 20:25:19 +0300

> Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:11:29 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Lata BL via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,
>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>
> 
> I have encountered 2 possible errors so far:-
> Error 1) I am confused as to whether there are 3 or 4 "special forms" in chapter 3.
> Is 'defun' treated as a macro or a special form or both of those?
> 
> 3.7 The ‘if’ Special Form
> =========================
> A third special form, in addition to ‘defun’ and ‘let’, is the
> conditional ‘if’.
> 
> <<< The number of special forms is later contradicted in 3.10 as follows >>>
> 
> 3.10 ‘save-excursion’
> =====================
> The ‘save-excursion’ function is the third and final special form that
> we will discuss in this chapter.

Thanks, I fixed these places.  'defun' was originally a special form,
but now it's a macro, as described in "Complications" and in section
3.1.

> Error 2) Possible extra closing parenthesis prevents evaluation with C-x C-e
> 3.7.1 The ‘type-of-animal’ Function in Detail
> ---------------------------------------------
> ...
>   In the ‘type-of-animal’ function, the code for the ‘if’ looks like
> this:
> 
>     (if (equal characteristic "fierce")
>         (message "It is a tiger!")))

In the current version of the manual, this is a complete function, and
its parentheses are balanced.

With that, I'm closing this bug report.

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