I've been playing more with this: xemacs -vanilla and load this file: <---- snip # -*- ksh -*- # Don't compctl -j -P % -x 's[-] p[1]' -k signals -- kill compctl -e disable compctl -d enable <---- snip Now, bind (lambda () (interactive) (message "%s" (buffer-syntactic-context))) onto some key and start moving around and running it. For example, run it at the beginning of the 1st compctl line, then the 3rd, then the line following the 3rd, then the 2nd => "string". Now move back to the 1st => "nil". Now the 2nd again => "nil". As you move around you get different answers for the same places. Can someone who understands the syntactic context cache please look into this? Thanks! Greg