Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!DSYS.NCSL.NIST.GOV!rbj
From: rbj@DSYS.NCSL.NIST.GOV (Root Boy Jim)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs
Subject: difficulties with lisp
Message-ID: <8908172214.AA15126@dsys.ncsl.nist.gov>
Date: 17 Aug 89 22:14:51 GMT
Sender: daemon@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Distribution: gnu
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology
	formerly National Bureau of Standards
Lines: 51

? From: Dr R M Damerell (RHBNC) <damerell@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk>

? 1. When I try to load-file and the file has syntax errors, I cannot
? see any indication of where the error was detected. Is there any way
? to get this? (I do appreciate that the real error may be a long way
? away from the detected error, but some errors such as "invalid read
? syntax" are usually detected at the right place; and at worst, you
? would know you need not search the file after the place where the
? error was found).

Perhaps a combination of eval-defun and forward-sexp in the buffer to
be loaded will work. I don't know whether debug-on-error works when
loading or not.

? 2. The byte compiler is better in this respect because it seems to
? display the names of successful defvars and defuns . Unfortunately
? they appear in the minibuffer too fast for me to read them. Please
? is there any way to recover error messages from the minibuffer?

Someone posted some code once to save the messages in a ring buffer.

? 3. Trying to debug a byte-compiled program, I get byte codes that
? fall off the right hand margin of the backtrace buffer's window. Is
? there a way to tell debug to wrap them onto the next line?

Well, you can use scroll-left, but who wants to look at byte-code?

? 4. What is the intended effect of end-of-defun when one defun is nested in 
? another? The following code is accepted by  load-file  and the functions do 
? what I expect. If you point at  BB  and type C-M-e  you move to DD instead 
? of  CC .  C-U  -1  C-M-e  also does peculiar things.

? (defun a()
?   (setq z 1)
? ;;; AA  
? (defun b ( y)
?   (setq w (+ y z) ))
? ;;; BB 
?   (b 3)
?   w)
? ;;; CC
? (defun c ()
?   17)
? ;;; DD

Dunno. I try to avoid this.

? R.M.Damerell

	Root Boy Jim
	Have GNU, Will Travel.