Re: Terminology change/nameing conventions?

[Helmut Eller]

* Tim X [2010-05-29 02:50+0200] writes:

> I was recently doing some work with elisp and noticed what appears to be
> differences in conventions regarding nameing. 
>
> In general, I've always thought of the term 'hook' as indicating a
> special variable that you could add function names to and that all those
> functions would be executed when the hook runs. However, I've noticed
> that some modes, e.g. comint mode, uses the term -functions i.e.
> comint-output-functions. You use add-hook to add new functions to this
> variable. 
>
> So, my question is why isn't this just comint-output-hook? 

This is described in the Elisp manual:
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Hooks.html

There are "normal hooks" by convention ending with -hook and "non-normal
hooks" often ending with -hooks or -functions.  "Normal hooks" don't
take arguments and the result is not used.

Helmut