Re: A read-based grep-like for symbols (el-search?) (was Do shorthands break basic tooling (tags, grep, etc)? (was Re: Shorthands have landed on master))

[João Távora]

On Fri, Oct 1, 2021 at 11:58 PM Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org> wrote:

> The objections raised in this discussion are not only about grep.

But in this thread, we're discussing a grep-like, so please don't derail it
with the same points rebutted over and over.

> They
> are also about tag systems (that can do more complex operations than grep
> on source files), and about the problem of code readability for Elisp
> programmers.  All of a sudden symbols can silently be transformed by
> 'read' without any clear indication that such a transformation takes
> place.

I'm getting a bit tired of stressing that things with no "clear indication" are
what higher level-languages are about: anonymous functions, macros,
etc abstraction in general. Namespaces are also that: you may not like them
but they exist everywhere else for a reason.

But for shorthands, it's probably very easy to highlight them with font-lock.
Does this count as "clear indication"? What about ElDoc showing you the
real name of the symbol in the echo area? Anyway, if you want to propose
a patch for font-lock in Elisp, I think it will be accepted.

João