Subject: Re: bug#50760: [External] : Re: bug#50760: 26.3; Add `symbol' to the Emacs manul glossary

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2021 09:12:12 +0300

> From: Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
> Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2021 22:14:11 +0000
> Cc: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
> 
> There are (at least) two important meanings of "symbol" in Emacs:
> 
> 1. The usual Lisp meaning, which is meaningful only in Lisp.
> 
> 2. The Elisp meaning of characters with symbol-constituent syntax.  And perhaps names composed of such chars, possibly combined with chars with other syntax, e.g., typically word-constituent.
> 
> For example, in programming languages (not only Elisp), we have commands such as `forward-symbol'.  They move over or otherwise manipulate names composed of symbol-constituent chars and sometimes other kinds of chars.
> 
> Emacs users deserve to know about these quite different meanings, I think. Each such meaning is important to using Emacs.

The meaning of "symbol" for searching is explained in "Symbol Search".