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From: worley@compass.UUCP (Dale Worley)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Thanks ...but the `fix' does not work
Message-ID: <9002051555.AA19330@sn1987a.compass.com>
Date: 5 Feb 90 15:55:14 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 39


   Recently I posted an article titled: What's wrong with my function?
   I received an enormous amount of email on the subject and I want to thank
   everyone who responded. The function I had problems with is:

   I was told by everyone who responded to me that the problem is I
   have too many parenthesis. The reason I put the extra set in is
   that with out it I get an error message that I don't understand.
   The error appears in the mini buffer and when I touch a key it is
   gone. Basically it says that I have too many parameters for lamda
   or somthing... The upshot is that removing the extra set of
   parenthesis does not work.

Well, to start out with, if you'd asked about the original problem,
you might have gotten it solved quicker.  Making a hack change and
then asking why *that* doesn't work doesn't solve the original
problem.

The error message you got tells you that something was called with the
wrong number of arguments.  Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you what.
You could, of course, check each of the seven functions you invoke,
but that would take a couple of minutes.

The solution is to use the Emacs debugger.  (See the topic Lisp
Debugger in Info.)  Set debug-on-error to t and then run your
function.  The debugger will tell you that you are calling
set-mark-command with the wrong number of arguments.  Checking the
documentation for set-mark-command doesn't tell you how many arguments
it has, but it tells you that you shouldn't be calling it.  However,
checking the code for set-mark-command (use find-tag) tells you that
it takes one argument.

Also, put your path at the end of your article -- many news feeds
(including mine) lose your path from the header.

Dale Worley		Compass, Inc.			worley@compass.com
--
Captain's Log, Star-date 6701.9:  After a major staff dispute, I have been
nailed to the hull.