Subject: bug#56870: company-dabbrev variable documentation

From: Matt Armstrong <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2022 14:24:14 -0700

uzibalqa <[email-masked]> writes:

> I am setting company-dabbrev variables
>
> (setq company-dabbrev-other-buffers 'all)
> (setq company-dabbrev-ignore-case 'keep-prefix)
>
> The documentation for the variables,  says
>
> If ‘all’, search all other buffers, except the ignored ones.
>
> I find the documentation confusing because nowhere does it say that on
> should use 'all rather than all or "all".

I can understand your confusion.

When working at the level of Emacs Lisp, keep a few things in mind:

a) Generally, in Emacs Lisp help, if you see something like ‘all’ it
means a lisp level symbol.  This could be a function name, variable, or
some other symbol.  This is part of the project's conventions, described
here:
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Documentation-Tips.html

b) When lisp level interfaces expect strings they generally say so, and
the examples use quotes like "this".

c) A bare all (without any quotes at all), is just a word, and not
a Lisp level function or variable.

Hope that helps!