Re: ielm not described in: An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp

[steve-humphreys]

> Sent: Friday, December 18, 2020 at 11:18 AM
> From: "Philip K." <philipk@posteo.net>
> To: steve-humphreys@gmx.com
> Cc: "Help Gnu Emacs" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: ielm not described in: An Introduction to Programming in Emacs 
> Lisp
>
> steve-humphreys@gmx.com writes:
> 
> > ielm not described in: An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp.
> >
> > Yet there are many reasons for beginners to use ielm.  Have some
> > examples and beginners will get more productive using it as they
> > delve into new things.
> 
> I guess it's not mentioned, because it is not necessary, and at least to
> my knowledge, most people will be using C-x C-e (eval-last-sexp) and
> C-M-x (eval-defun) in the *scratch* buffer. Using a REPL, when you can
> evaluate any part of a buffer seems like a step back to me.

I don't know the details, but someone mentioned it to me whilst I was 
learning about defvar, setq, and setq within a "let" construct.

Do you plan to continue suporting ielm?  If yes, include it in the Intro,
as I know a few people who did not know about it.  
 
If you type C-c C-b you can change ielm’s working buffer to one
of your choosing and then all the code you evaluate thereafter
will be treated as if you executed it in the context of that
buffer. This functionality comes in handy if you are dealing with
buffer-local variables or changes that’re specific to one buffer
only. Very, very powerful.

> But I guess there would be no harm in mentioning it.
> 
> -- 
>       Philip K.
> 
>