Re: Do shorthands break basic tooling (tags, grep, etc)? (was Re: Shorthands have landed on master)

[André A . Gomes]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> Hello, André.
>
> On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 13:31:34 +0300, André A. Gomes wrote:
>> Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org> writes:
>
>> > A simple example: suppose you want to check which ELPA package
>> > activates tab-bar-mode.  That's easy to do with "grep -R tab-bar-mode"
>> > in a clone of the ELPA repository.  With symbol prefix renaming, a
>> > package author might decide to add ("tb-" . "tab-bar-") in the
>> > shorthands of the package, and "grep -R tab-bar-mode" will not show
>> > anything.  Likewise for tag systems, the symbols that are recorded
>> > will possibly be different in each package, and a search for
>> > tab-bar-mode will not return occurrences of tb-mode.
>
>> I don't think this is a problem.  Grep comes the world of Unix and its
>> mantras.  But Lisp REPLs come from another world.
>
>> Using grep and tag systems to reason about a Lisp program is like eating
>> soup with a fork.  You can do it, but it's the wrong tool.
>
> That is a very negative and unhelpful thing to say.  Do you have the
> requisite background to say it?  What precisely would you use in place
> of grep, which is a powerful, easily learnt, fast, universal tool?
>
> My experience is that grep is an essential tool for Emacs maintenance.

I'm sorry that my words had a negative impact towards you or others.  I
acknowledge and value the efforts of any member of this community.

My words were misinterpreted perhaps.  Firstly, I also eat soup with a
fork, i.e. I also grep Lisp source code.  But I must be honest with
myself, and admit it's not the right tool.  Indeed, grep is a universal
tool that can be used to inspect any textual data.  But powerful Lisp
environments (think Slime) are "aware of themselves" and do better than
grep does.

My point is thus simple and far from being original.  A culture shock
between "Unix" and Lisp exists, and it has been discussed to death (for
instance in the "UNIX Haters Handbook").

I think shorthands is a good idea.  While the grep claim is true, I find
it orthogonal in the sense that we're judging the adoption of a new idea
by the wrong standards.

Again, I apologize.


-- 
André A. Gomes
"Free Thought, Free World"