Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!uwm.edu!rpi!rpi.edu!tale From: tale@turing.cs.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: Why does completion require an alist? Message-ID: Date: 1 Sep 90 11:56:32 GMT References: <9008311659.AA14901@STEVE-DALLAS.MIT.EDU> Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Computer Science, Troy NY Lines: 18 In gaynor@sparky.rutgers.edu (Silver) writes: I probably don't need to say this, but an easy way to use completing read with a list of strings is to simply mapcar list on the list of strings, as in: (completing-read "Well, which one? " (mapcar 'list list-of-strings)) Of course this conses up a lot more than it needs to in order to perform the function. That is, as completing-read is coded now it certainly does need to be done but completing-read could easily be modified to take either a simple list or an alist -- even a vector (though a string vector would be a bit non-sensical). -- (setq mail '("tale@cs.rpi.edu" "tale@ai.mit.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet")) The most remarkable thing about looking at a picture of myself was the sudden realisation that my hair is in fact parted on the left and not the right.