Re: Change in files.el

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Anyway, I definitely see what you mean.  I just disagree on the
>> seriousness of the problem, and on the impact of the guideline on it.
> The issue is not serious enough to prevent people from using the
> methods you'd like to see, but I question the wisdom of having a
> project-wide guidelines to _always_ use them is similar situations.

I think the benefits are the following:
- (eventually) more consistency, such as knowing that you can use
  `add-function` will work right on any *-predicate or
  *-function variable.
- until recently, it was common for such variables to have a nil
  default value.  Without an active effort to reverse this, we'll always
  end up with such new variables introduced with a nil default value
  (especially since it's very common for new such variables to have
  a trivial default behavior, and only accumulating complexity later
  on, at which point it's a lot more difficult to change the default to
  be non-nil).


        Stefan