Re: declare function/macro private

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

"Paul W. Rankin" via "Emacs development discussions."
<emacs-devel@gnu.org> writes:

> Given we have a function/macro declare interactive-only property,
> would it be worthwhile to consider a `private' property?
>
> Of course there's already the convention of
> prefix--my-private-function, but my thinking here is that a program
> could declare a function/macro as private, then the compiler could
> signal a warning/error if that function appeared in a library outside
> the library it was defined and declared private.

The compiler could do this with "--" symbols if we wanted to, I guess.  

> e.g. in foo.el:
>
> (defun foo-private ()
>   (declare (private "use `foo-public' instead."))
>   ...)

I'm not necessarily against this or anything, but I do like the "--"
convention, because it makes it very explicit what's internal and what's
not.  On the other hand, if we had tagging like this, we could also
make (say) font-lock react to this information and make it as obvious as
the "--" convention.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no