Re: Placement of list within an interactive clause

[Jean Louis]

Most of time I do not use `interactive' for supply arguments to
function.

Thus instead of following:

(defun my-fun-1 (&optional name)
  (interactive "MName: ")
  (message "Hello %s" name))

I am using following:

(defun my-fun-2 (&optional name)
  (interactive)
  (let ((name (or name (read-from-minibuffer "Name: "))))
    (message "Hello %s" name)))

as that gives me little more freedom:

- if I call (my-fun-1) ⇒ "Hello nil" that result is not what I
 really want. It makes it difficult to get the wanted result. To
 get the wanted result I need to use:

(call-interactively 'my-fun-1) ⇒ "Hello Bob"

- but if I call (my-fun-2) and NAME is not supplied, I will be
  asked for name: (my-fun-2) ⇒ "Hello Bob" and will not get "NIL"
  as result. In this case I need not complicate the call and use
`call-interactively`.

Additionall, complex `interactive` clauses I find often too
difficult to comprehend than reading the body of the function.

Fo this reason I recommend using this second approach with (or
ARGUMENT (GET-ARGUMENT)) rather then using `interactive` with
purpose to supply arguments.


-- 
Jean

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