GNU bug report logs - #62009
29.0.60; Emacs crashes on setf symbol-name

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From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Gregory Heytings <gregory <at> heytings.org>
Cc: philipk <at> posteo.net, michael_heerdegen <at> web.de, mail <at> daniel-mendler.de, rpluim <at> gmail.com, monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca, 62009 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, arstoffel <at> gmail.com
Subject: bug#62009: 29.0.60; Emacs crashes on setf symbol-name
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2023 17:37:16 +0200

> Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2023 15:16:36 +0000
> From: Gregory Heytings <gregory <at> heytings.org>
> cc: Daniel Mendler <mail <at> daniel-mendler.de>, philipk <at> posteo.net, 
>     michael_heerdegen <at> web.de, rpluim <at> gmail.com, monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca, 
>     62009 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, arstoffel <at> gmail.com
> 
> 
> >
> > Sorry, I object to any change to cater for this use case.
> >
> 
> IMO a reasonable change here would be to update the docstring of 
> symbol-name, which only says "Return SYMBOL's name, a string.", with a 
> warning similar to the one in the manual:
> 
> Warning: Changing the string by substituting characters does change the 
> name of the symbol, but fails to update the obarray, so don't do it!

That is okay, of course.  My objection was to the code changes.

> Perhaps we could also explicitly mention, in the docstring and/or in the 
> manual, that doing that can also crash Emacs.

I think being a bit vague here and talking about "dangers" should be
good enough, since not every such code will crash, and probably also
not on every platform and in every build configuration.

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