defvar interactively, user-variable-p

[Uwe Brauer]

Hello

I am no friend of defcustom, but would like to define variables in what
that I can change their value interactively via set-variable.

According to the manual



,----
| Function: user-variable-p variable
| 
|     This function returns t if variable is a user option--a variable
|     intended to be set by the user for customization--and nil otherwise.
|     (Variables other than user options exist for the internal purposes
|     of Lisp programs, and users need not know about them.)
| 
|     User option variables are distinguished from other variables either
|     though being declared using defcustom(4) or by the first character
|     of their variable-documentation property. If the property exists and
|     is a string, and its first character is `*', then the variable is a
|     user option.
`----

This is a feature I am familiar with from Xemacs.

Now look at that



(defvar latexdiff-perl nil
"*Whether to use latexdiff based on perl or not, default is NIL.")

(user-variable-p latexdiff-perl)

Returns NIL and not t. And in fact I cannot set the variable
interactively. What do I miss?

Thanks

Uwe Brauer