Re: [PATCH] Interpret #r"..." as a raw string

[Matt Armstrong]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
>> Cc: monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, db48x@db48x.net, eliz@gnu.org,
>>      conao3@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2021 00:53:55 -0500
>> 
>> In Lisp, what you put in the program _is_ a string.  What you write
>> in the textual code is not a "literal", it is the textual representation
>> of the string to put in the program.
>
> What is the difference between "literal string" and "textual
> representation of a string"?  I don't think I understand the
> difference from what you wrote.
>
>> I just saw that the term "literal" appears occasionally in the Emacs
>> Lisp Ref Manual.  Would someone like to rewrite those parts so that they
>> fit the concepts of Lisp batter?
>
> To rewrite those parts, one needs to understand what's wrong with them
> and how to express that better.  For example, we also say "literal
> characters" in a few places -- is that wrong as well, and if so, how?

I have noticed that most Lisp reference material does not use the word
"literal" to describe source code elements.  Which raises the question:
how does Lisp documentation typically talk about these things?

In my experience, most references typically don't name them at all.
E.g. when talking about strings it might say "the read syntax of a
string is ..." but things that satisfy "the read syntax of a string" are
never given a name like "string literal."