GNU bug report logs - #62840
30.0.50; Doc bug: obsolete paragraph in Elisp Ref

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From: Nick Dokos <ndokos <at> gmail.com>
To: 62840 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#62840: 30.0.50; Doc bug: obsolete paragraph in Elisp Ref
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2023 13:48:59 -0400

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emacs Lisp Reference manual, Chapter "Variables", Section "Lexical
Binding" says:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
...
   (Internally, the lexical environment is an alist of symbol-value
pairs, with the final element in the alist being the symbol ‘t’ rather
than a cons cell.  Such an alist can be passed as the second argument to
the ‘eval’ function, in order to specify a lexical environment in which
to evaluate a form.  *Note Eval::.  Most Emacs Lisp programs, however,
should not interact directly with lexical environments in this way; only
specialized programs like debuggers.)

...
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

I don't know if the structure of the lexical environment was ever really
relevant: it seems to be an internal detail that should not have found
its way into the documentation in the first place, but that's guessing
on my part.

The important thing is that it does not seem to be the case any longer:
the `t' is present at the end of the lexical environment in Emacs 28.2:

    (let ((foo 233)) (lambda (x) (* x foo))) ==> (closure ((foo . 233) t) (x) (* x foo))

but it is no longer present in current upstream:

    (let ((foo 233)) (lambda (x) (* x foo))) ==> (closure ((foo . 233)) (x) (* x foo))

so the above paragraph needs modification (if not outright excision).

-- 
Nick

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