eintr: Digression concerning error
Digression about the word “error”
.................................
In my opinion, it is slightly misleading, at least to humans, to use the
term “error” as the name of the ‘error’ function. A better term would
be “cancel”. Strictly speaking, of course, you cannot point to, much
less rotate a pointer to a list that has no length, so from the point of
view of the computer, the word “error” is correct. But a human expects
to attempt this sort of thing, if only to find out whether the kill ring
is full or empty. This is an act of exploration.
From the human point of view, the act of exploration and discovery is
not necessarily an error, and therefore should not be labeled as one,
even in the bowels of a computer. As it is, the code in Emacs implies
that a human who is acting virtuously, by exploring his or her
environment, is making an error. This is bad. Even though the computer
takes the same steps as it does when there is an error, a term such as
“cancel” would have a clearer connotation.
Info Catalog
eintr: Body of current-kill
eintr: Understanding current-kill
eintr: Determining the Element