The new syntax-table capabalities which were recently committed broke autoload.el. Specifically, it was choking with "Unbalanced parentheses" on files which contained unquoted pipe ('|') characters. I've managed to figure out what was happening, and have a fix for it which I'll be submitting. I wanted to discuss the issue a bit though, and get someone's opinion on the right thing to do. The problem is that lisp-mode-syntax-table was being incorrectly initialized because the length of the list returned by parse-partial-sexp changed (from 8 to 10) with the new functionality. lisp-mode-syntax-table is copied from emacs-lisp-mode-syntax-table. It then (among other things) gets | defined as a quote character. Then if "new" parse-partial-sexp functionality is available, | is redefined as punctuation and as part of the #|...|# comment sequence. Here's the fix (and I realize that these diffs may be a bit mangled by the text wrapping of my mail client. sorry about that, and I'll make sure the final one sent to xemacs-patches isn't): Index: lisp-mode.el =================================================================== RCS file: /usr/CVSroot/XEmacs/xemacs/lisp/lisp-mode.el,v retrieving revision 1.10.2.7 diff -u -r1.10.2.7 lisp-mode.el --- lisp-mode.el 2000/11/23 06:27:36 1.10.2.7 +++ lisp-mode.el 2001/02/17 09:34:25 ＠＠ -177,7 +177,7 ＠＠ ;; ;; If emacs was compiled with NEW_SYNTAX, then do ;; CL's #| |# block comments. - (if (= 8 (length (parse-partial-sexp (point) (point)))) + (if (< 7 (length (parse-partial-sexp (point) (point)))) (progn (modify-syntax-entry ?# "' 58" lisp-mode-syntax-table) (modify-syntax-entry ?| ". 67" lisp-mode-syntax-table)) ---- end of patch ---- I have three problems with this as the only fix, though: 1) This seeems like an odd way to detect syntax-table functionality, and XEmacs now supports the required functionality unequivocally, so there's no need to detect it at all. 2) | should still be a quote character under lisp-mode, in addition to being part of a two-char comment sequence. 3) autoload.el should be using the emacs-lisp syntax table, instead of the standard lisp one (it is, after all, dealing with emacs lisp). Therefore, I propose the following patch instead: Index: lisp-mode.el =================================================================== RCS file: /usr/CVSroot/XEmacs/xemacs/lisp/lisp-mode.el,v retrieving revision 1.10.2.7 diff -u -r1.10.2.7 lisp-mode.el --- lisp-mode.el 2000/11/23 06:27:36 1.10.2.7 +++ lisp-mode.el 2001/02/17 09:45:14 ＠＠ -170,19 +170,11 ＠＠ (if (not lisp-mode-syntax-table) (progn (setq lisp-mode-syntax-table (copy-syntax-table emacs-lisp-mode-syntax-table)) - (modify-syntax-entry ?\| "\" " lisp-mode-syntax-table) (modify-syntax-entry ?\[ "_ " lisp-mode-syntax-table) ;; XEmacs changes (modify-syntax-entry ?\] "_ " lisp-mode-syntax-table) - ;; - ;; If emacs was compiled with NEW_SYNTAX, then do - ;; CL's #| |# block comments. - (if (= 8 (length (parse-partial-sexp (point) (point)))) - (progn - (modify-syntax-entry ?# "' 58" lisp-mode-syntax-table) - (modify-syntax-entry ?| ". 67" lisp-mode-syntax-table)) - ;; else, old style - (modify-syntax-entry ?\| "\" " lisp-mode-syntax-table)))) + (modify-syntax-entry ?# "' 58" lisp-mode-syntax-table) + (modify-syntax-entry ?| "\" 67" lisp-mode-syntax-table))) (define-abbrev-table 'lisp-mode-abbrev-table ()) Index: autoload.el =================================================================== RCS file: /usr/CVSroot/XEmacs/xemacs/lisp/autoload.el,v retrieving revision 1.2.2.7 diff -u -r1.2.2.7 autoload.el --- autoload.el 2000/09/20 02:39:08 1.2.2.7 +++ autoload.el 2001/02/17 09:45:14 ＠＠ -167,7 +167,7 ＠＠ (let ((find-file-hooks nil) (enable-local-variables nil)) (set-buffer (or visited (find-file-noselect file))) - (set-syntax-table lisp-mode-syntax-table)) + (set-syntax-table emacs-lisp-mode-syntax-table)) (save-excursion (save-restriction (widen) This fixes both autoload.el and lisp-mode-syntax-table properly. Any objections?