GNU bug report logs - #9482
Documentation bug: Emacs Lisp Manual should say quoting does not cons explicitly in quoting section. related to bug#9469

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Le Wang <l26wang <at> gmail.com>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: Documentation bug: Emacs Lisp Manual should say quoting does not cons
	explicitly in quoting section. related to bug#9469
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2011 23:01:23 +0800

Relevant page here:
http://www.gnu.org/s/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Quoting.html

I was confused and always assumed that

'(a . b)

is simply short hand for

(cons 'a 'b)

Reading stackexchange, it seems at least some other people are under
this impression as well.  This works a majority of the time, but when
it fails it's really surprising.

In fact, the manual already has an example of this pit-fall in the
nconc section: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/elisp/html_node/Rearrangement.html

I think the quoting section should give an explicit warning with a
reference to the nconc example.



-- 
Le

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