Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!BBN.COM!gildea
From: gildea@BBN.COM (Stephen Gildea)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.bug
Subject: Re: comment-start should always be a string
Message-ID: <8901062035.AA04837@prep.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 6 Jan 89 20:46:31 GMT
Sender: bob@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Distribution: gnu
Organization: GNUs Not Usenet
Lines: 23


    Date: 5 Jan 89 17:58:26 GMT
    From: "Randal L. Schwartz @ Stonehenge" <tektronix!reed!ogccse!littlei!omepd!merlyn@cis.ohio-state.edu>
    References: <8901042305.AA26705@prep.ai.mit.edu>
    
    In article <8901042305.AA26705@prep.ai.mit.edu>, gildea@BBN.COM writes:
    | Currently, comment-start is "*String to insert to start a new comment,
    | or nil if no comment syntax defined."  This is a pain for simple
    | routines that want to insert some text into a buffer, surrounded by
    | comment delimiters.  It would be much more convenient if comment-start
    | were always a string ("" if no comment syntax) and the test for
    | whether there is a comment syntax be whether or not comment-start-skip
    | is non-nil.
    
    I disagree.  For one, I can use (not comment-start) as a test now to
    see if a comment syntax is defined or not.
    ...

Read the original more carefully.  Under this proposal, the test to see
if a comment syntax is defined is simply (if comment-start-skip ...)
instead of the currently-used (if comment-start ...).

 < Stephen