Without the patch, ielm wraps the evaluation of the _expression_ given by the user in a condition case, and in case of an error, or exit, displays an appropriate message in its buffer, right under the evaluated _expression_, regardless of debug-on-error and debug-on-exit.
With the patch, the message that ielm displays in its buffer will be a generic error message regardless if there was an error in the evaluated form, or a quit. However:
- if debug-on-error is t, emacs will enter the debugger and show a stack trace, just like with almost any other evaluation method. When the user continues the execution from the debugger, ielm will correctly resume execution
- if debug-on-error is nil, emacs will display the specific error in the minibuffer anyway
Similar things are true for debug-on-quit.
I think this is an improvement over the current state of affairs. Of course ideally I would like to preserve the "nice" message in ielm buffer and make the improvements I made, but emacs does not seem to make it possible to do some handling of an error and then to re-raise it while preserving the original stack trace.
Cheers,
Jarosław Rzeszótko