Re: What is the type of user input?

[Hattuari]

Kevin Rodgers wrote:

> Hattuari wrote:
>  > The following code demonstrates the problem I'm having:
>  > ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
>  > ;; create a property list and use it to map long strings
>  > ;; to short strings
>  > (setq paste-gl-ty
...
> gl-type is a string.  Since the paste-gl-type-map property list is keyed
> by symbols, plist-get returns nil. 

That's what I was missing.  I was assuming that 'symbol-name implicitly
meant symbol would evaluate to a string.  Now that I've read the first
several chapters of the Elisp Reference Manual, I have a better idea of
what's going on.

> The %s message specifier can be 
> applied to any Lisp object, and symbols and strings are formatted the
> same.
> 
> The solution is to either (1) read gl-type with the %S code or (2) call
> plist-get with (intern gl-type).

I opted for trying an association array, which also worked.  I will try your
suggestion of using (intern gl-type).  As for reading gl-type with %S, I'm
not sure what that would do for me.  The only use I know for that is to use
it in a string format.

>  > OTOH, when I evaluate this expression in an emacs-lisp buffer
>  > (paste-gl-array 'GLbyte 4 'v), I see the following in the echo area:
>  >
>  > gl-type=GLbyte, gl-components=4, gl-vector=v , suffix=b
>  >
>  > That is the desired result.  Why is this not the result of calling the
>  > function as an interactive command as described above?
>  >
>  > I will continue to look for an answer in the documentation, but any
>  > help from someone who knows the answer would be appreciated.
> 
> It's not that hard to find:
> 
> `C-h f message' has a link to the doc string for `format', which has a
> link to the doc string for `princ' in its description of %s:
> 
> ,----[ C-h f princ RET ]
> | princ is a built-in function.
> | (princ OBJECT &optional PRINTCHARFUN)
> |
> | Output the printed representation of OBJECT, any Lisp object.
> | No quoting characters are used; no delimiters are printed around
> | the contents of strings.
> |
> | OBJECT is any of the Lisp data types: a number, a string, a symbol,
> | a list, a buffer, a window, a frame, etc.
> |
> | A printed representation of an object is text which describes that
> | object.
> ...`----

That doesn't tell me anything that I see as addressing my problem. Can you
explain how that answers my question as to why the two symbols were not
comparing as I had expected?

 (type-of gl-type) was what showed me what I was doing wrong.  I tried to
post back to the newsgroup, but my ISP was down.

-- 
p->m == (*p).m == p[0].m