[slime-devel] open parenthesis in the documentation string confuses slime-compile-defun

[Edi Weitz]

On Fri, 24 Nov 2006 06:56:40 +0200, Anton Vodonosov <vodonosov at mail.ru> wrote:

> Open parenthesis in the documentation string confuses slime-compile-defun.
>
> Exmaple:
>
> (defun f2 ()
> "
> (
>  ...
> )
> "
>   )
>
> Note, open parenthesis shuld be the first character of the line.
>
> Trying to compile this with slime-compile-defun signals the
> following:
>
> READ from #1=#<INPUT STRING-INPUT-STREAM>: a token consisting only of
> dots cannot be meaningfully read in
>    [Condition of type SYSTEM::SIMPLE-READER-ERROR]
>
> Looks like on the emacs side slime takes this open parenthesis into
> account when picking out parentheses-balanced portion of text.

That's a (known and old) Emacs problem that's not really related to
SLIME.  The usual workaround (see for example the SLIME source code
itself) is to escape open parens in strings:

  (defun f2 ()
  "
  \(
   ...
  )
  "
    )

See also here:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/Left-Margin-Paren.html

HTH,
Edi.