Better debugging of .emacs, please

[Tommy Olesen]

Summary:  In emacs 20.7 I was allowed to put a \275 in a string in
.emacs, e.g.,

  (global-set-key "\C-\275" 'apropos)

In version 21.1, I am not allowed to do this.  I have found another way
of doing this (global-set-key [(control 275)] 'apropos), so it is no
longer a problem.  I expect you have changed this behaviour on purpose.
My bug report is the fact that I could not get any help from using the
--debug-init option.  All I got was the stack trace:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Invalid modifier in string")
  eval-buffer(#<buffer  *load*> nil "~/.emacs" nil t)
  load-with-code-conversion("c:/to/.emacs" "~/.emacs" t t)
  load("~/.emacs" t t)
  #[nil & some more garbage that I cannot paste into outlook]
  command-line()
  normal-top-level()

which gave me only little help in finding the bug.  I would like to
suggest that it tell me where in .emacs the offending modifier was, or
that it print out the offending modifier.  I found the offender through
binary searching through the .emacs file.

I realise this is a minor thing, but as I have spent a long time
figuring out how to handle this bug, I thought I would make a suggestion
for an improvement, lest others should spend a lot of time too.  

Thanks for the world's best editor (and lifestyle, really, emacs is more
than an editor)!


Regards,
Tommy Olesen




Details:

version: GNU Emacs 20.7.1 (i386-*-nt5.1.2600) of Tue Jun 13 2000 on
buffy

from binary distribution (i.e., I did not compile it myself).

os: windoze xp

.emacs = (global-set-key "\C-\275" 'apropos)

reproduce: start emacs with the aboce .emacs

*Messages* says:

  An error has occurred while loading `c:/to/.emacs':

  error: "Invalid modifier in string"

  To ensure normal operation, you should investigate the cause
  of the error in your initialization file and remove it.  Start
  Emacs with the `--debug-init' option to view a complete error
  backtrace


backtrace (running emacs with --debug-init):

  Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Invalid modifier in string")
    eval-buffer(#<buffer  *load*> nil "~/.emacs" nil t)
    load-with-code-conversion("c:/to/.emacs" "~/.emacs" t t)
    load("~/.emacs" t t)
    #[nil & some more garbage that I cannot paste into outlook]
    command-line()
    normal-top-level()