{"id":10832,"date":"2022-09-25T13:38:56","date_gmt":"2022-09-25T17:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=10832"},"modified":"2022-09-25T16:35:01","modified_gmt":"2022-09-25T20:35:01","slug":"describe-symbol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=10832","title":{"rendered":"Describe Symbol"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A short post for a lazy Sunday. Grant Rettke over at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wisdomandwonder.com\">Wisdom and Wonder<\/a> has a quick tip. He recommends <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wisdomandwonder.com\/emacs\/13836\/you-gotta-try-using-describe-symbol\">trying describe-symbol<\/a> for invoking Emacs builtin documentation. He says that it\u2019s almost always what you want when you invoke <code>describe-function<\/code> or <code>describe-variable<\/code>. As far as I can see, it\u2019s the same information. I looked at the source code but it was hard to tell if it adds extra data or not.<\/p>\n<p>You invoke it with <kbd>Ctrl<\/kbd>+<kbd>h<\/kbd> <kbd>o<\/kbd> so if nothing else you need remember only one shortcut for your documentation needs.<\/p>\n<p><b>UPDATE<\/b> <span class=\"timestamp-wrapper\"><span class=\"timestamp\">[2022-09-25 Sun 16:31]<\/span><\/span>: Grant remarks in the <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=10832#comment-5995767031\">comments<\/a> that one of the reasons he likes <code>describe-symbol<\/code> is because it tells you when there is a variable and function with the same name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A short post for a lazy Sunday. Grant Rettke over at Wisdom and Wonder has a quick tip. He recommends trying describe-symbol for invoking Emacs builtin documentation. He says that it\u2019s almost always what you want when you invoke describe-function &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=10832\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-10832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-emacs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10832"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10834,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10832\/revisions\/10834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}