Re: more than one prefix argument

[Andreas Röhler]

Am 27.07.2011 11:48, schrieb Tim Cross:
[ ... ]
> > Don't suggest additional code but a better use of "P" - no parallel
> > implementations. Having "P" as a branch-flag not affected by "p"
>
> Sorry, just not quite following your argument.
>
> If we were to get rid of one, it would have to be the numeric version
> (i.e. p) rather than P as sometimes you need to be able to distinguish
> between nil and 1.

Could you give a case for that? IMHO we have to distinguish between nil 
and t at these occasions. Looks like wrongly reffered c-style 
limitation, which we gladly don't have business with.

> Essentially, we would need the raw form.


why?

We need a number or a boolean.
"p" should send a number, 1 as default.
"P" a boolean, nil as default.


This means
> that whenever you need to process the prefix argument as a number you
> will need to test and convert it to distinguish nil and extract the
> value from the list - this would be additional code ini your function.
>
> I don't understand what you mean by having a handy code for branching.
> Can you give an example of how this code would work and how a command
> using this code would be called?

How do you switch an alternative now?
Quite often that is done with an negative or positive numeric value.
(abbrev-mode -1)
(abbrev-mode 1)

Bad style IMHO, C-like obfuscating the code.

much better would be

(abbrev-mode nil)
(abbrev-mode t)

Cheers,

Andreas

> tim