Re: One-off history for read-string

[Emanuel Berg]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

> In my code, it is just
>
> (let ((comment-history ...)) ...)
>
> I'd be thankful if you could come up with a better,
> non-generic name. But I don't see the point in doing
> that: the scope of the name is limited to one
> let-form, whose body is one read-string invocation.
> It's pretty much self-explanatory.

On that level it is nothing to argue about. Modules,
and functions, and variables that are made public by
means of the documentation and help system, there is
where it matters and one should think twice.

Nothing to say you can't start practice at the `let'
level, and that attitude will bottom-up eventually
lead to better and more editable code, for sure, but
it is nothing to argue about.

>> Still, there is no gain removing it unless it does
>> any harm.
>
> Yes, there is. The DRY principle. Also, it does some
> harm: the (server-side) history _can (and frequently
> is) be changed by other tools_, and then the
> (Emacs-side) one would be _wrong_.

DRY (don't repeat yourself) is "aimed at reducing
repetition of information" [1] but there is also the
principle of redundancy as a good thing (e.g., RAID,
memory hierarchy, even larger systems as once Usenet).

But here, neither DRY nor redundancy-yes-please
apply what I can see because the client history
shouldn't be used, so it doesn't matter what it is.

If something doesn't help, but doesn't harm either, it
shouldn't be removed/disabled as the only outcomes of
that are neutral (OK, still no help/harm) or negative
(ouch! a bug introduced in removing/disabling it,
unsuspected consequences for some other component,
unsuspected loss of usefulness in some not-thought-of
future use case, etc.).

> It's not that I want it or not; it just works that
> way. (But I want it, too, btw.) It is a service I'm
> not an author of, nor do I control it. And there are
> at least two other clients besides my Emacs one (and
> I personally use at least one of them also
> regularly!), and they all have a "history" feature.
> And it's a good thing they do, because, it is
> sometimes needed.

So you have several computers and you want the history
to be shared between them?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_repeat_yourself

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