Re: character syntax of linefeed?

[Stefan Monnier]

> However, if I open, say, an empty foo.el or foo.c file, press RET
> and then M-: (list (string (char-before))
>                    (string (char-syntax (char-before))))
> I get ("
>        " ">"), i.e. a syntax of type 'endcomment'.

Elisp has comments of the form ;...\n, so clearly LF needs to be an
end-comment marker.  The same will hold for any major mode where there
are comments that end at LF.

> Can I count on it being ">"? 

In Elisp mode, yes.  In general of course not: that's why we have
syntax-tables: so that its contents can be different in
different situations.


        Stefan