Re: logging in emacs

Thomas Koch <[email protected]> writes:

> I was wondering what the right way would be to write log messages in
> Emacs, considering also that I wanted to avoid composing messages if
> logging were turned off.

The right way depends on what you want.  Most of the time simple calls
to `message' are good enough, maybe in combination with
`inhibit-message' bound so that the messages are not displayed when you
don't want that.  But I can't tell whether you want your log messages
merged into *Messages* or not.  Neither is wrong.

There is a standard interface for warnings OTOH, but no higher-level
standard for any arbitrary kind of log messages, AFAICT.

> Fun fact: AI suggested to me that it would be idiomatic to Emacs to
> use a macro as a log function. However none (except sh-debug) of the
> above is a macro.

No - but all log functions in Emacs use AI to generate output.  It would
not be possible without.  It's just too hard, look, I tried:

  (log "A log message to the user") ~~> error


Michael.