Subject: bug#78952: closed (Re: bug#78952: Bug or feature? intern-soft return non-exists symbol)

From: [email-masked] (GNU bug Tracking System)
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2025 13:35:04 +0000

Your bug report

#78952: Bug or feature? intern-soft return non-exists symbol

which was filed against the emacs package, has been closed.

The explanation is attached below, along with your original report.
If you require more details, please reply to [email-masked].

-- 
78952: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=78952
GNU Bug Tracking System
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Subject: Re: bug#78952: Bug or feature? intern-soft return non-exists symbol
From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
To: Lin Sun <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2025 16:34:18 +0300
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

> Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2025 05:20:05 -0700
> From: Lin Sun <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked]
> 
> Thank you for comments, I use the intern-soft to detect symbols existing for package but found it's failed
> even I unbound the variables. :) 

If you want to know whether a symbol is bound as a variable use
'foundp', not 'intern-soft'.

> Please feel free to close the ticket, thank you!

Done.

Subject: Bug or feature? intern-soft return non-exists symbol
From: Lin Sun <[email-masked]>
To: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2025 04:22:38 +0000
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Hi, get confused intern-soft return a symbol which already unbound, 

Here are the lines to make a symbol then makunbound the symbol, but after that the intern-soft still return the symbol:

(setq a-test-variable-unbound-later t)

(intern-soft "a-test-variable-unbound-later")

(makunbound 'a-test-variable-unbound-later)

(boundp 'a-test-variable-unbound-later)

(intern-soft "a-test-variable-unbound-later") ;; why not nil?

It's a feature or a bug? Thanks