Re: cc-mode adds newlines

[Stefan Monnier]

> Before that, c-mode silently set require-final-newline to t, and the only
> remedy was to write a hook function.  That was surely worse.

I guess that's one of the reasons why some people consider `customize'
as harmful: using mode hooks is nothing bad, quite the contrary: it's the
standard way to change things in a mode-specific way.

> That's somewhat unfair.  `require-final-newline' is something that, with
> the benefit of hindsight, was perhaps a bad idea.

No, it's a very good idea.  But setting it to t without the user's explicit
consent is a problem because few users know about it so they won't
understand what's going on.  Setting it to `ask' is safe and provides
basically the same benefit.


        Stefan