User's Guide

to

Elib - The Emacs Lisp Library

version 0.06

Inge Wallin

last updated 24 Jan 1993

Copyright (C) 1991, 1992 Free Software Foundation

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions that the section entitled "GNU ELIB GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE" is included exactly as in the original, and provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language under the above conditions for modified versions, except that the section entitled "GNU ELIB GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE" may be included in a translation approved by the author instead of in the original English.

• License information: Information about terms for copying Elib.
• Installation: How to install Elib on your system.
• What is Elib?: What is Elib?
• Container data types: Data types which can contain other data.
• Cookie package: The Cookie package.
• String functions: A number of string functions.
• Read functions: Read data from the minibuffer.
• Future enhancements: Future enhancements of Elib.
• Reporting bugs: Where do you report a bug you have found? in this manual.

GNU ELIB GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

The license agreements of most software companies keep you at the mercy of those companies. By contrast, our general public license is intended to give everyone the right to share GNU Elib. To make sure that you get the rights we want you to have, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. Hence this license agreement.

Specifically, we want to make sure that you have the right to give away copies of GNU Elib, that you receive source code or else can get it if you want it, that you can change GNU Elib or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.

To make sure that everyone has such rights, we have to forbid you to deprive anyone else of these rights. For example, if you distribute copies of GNU Elib, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must tell them their rights.

Also, for our own protection, we must make certain that everyone finds out that there is no warranty for GNU Elib. If GNU Elib is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not what we distributed, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on our reputation.

Therefore we make the following terms which say what you must do to be allowed to distribute or change GNU Elib.

COPYING POLICIES

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of GNU Elib source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy a valid copyright notice "Copyright (C) 1992 Free Software Foundation (or with whatever year is appropriate); keep intact the notices on all files that refer to this License Agreement and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the GNU Elib program a copy of this License Agreement along with the program. You may charge a distribution fee for the physical act of transferring a copy.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of GNU Elib or any portion of it, and copy and distribute such modifications under the terms of Paragraph 1 above, provided that you also do the following:
   • cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change; and
   • cause the whole of any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is a derivative of GNU Elib or any part thereof, to be licensed at no charge to all third parties on terms identical to those contained in this License Agreement (except that you may choose to grant more extensive warranty protection to some or all third parties, at your option).
   • You may charge a distribution fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
   Mere aggregation of another unrelated program with this program (or its derivative) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other program under the scope of these terms.
3. You may copy and distribute GNU Elib (or any portion of it in under Paragraph 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Paragraphs 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
   • accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Paragraphs 1 and 2 above; or,
   • accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party free (except for a nominal shipping charge) a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Paragraphs 1 and 2 above; or,
   • accompany it with the information you received as to where the corresponding source code may be obtained. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form alone.)
   For an executable file, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains; but, as a special exception, it need not include source code for modules which are standard libraries that accompany the operating system on which the executable file runs.
4. You may not copy, sublicense, distribute or transfer GNU Elib except as expressly provided under this License Agreement. Any attempt otherwise to copy, sublicense, distribute or transfer GNU Elib is void and your rights to use the program under this License agreement shall be automatically terminated. However, parties who have received computer software programs from you with this License Agreement will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
5. If you wish to incorporate parts of GNU Elib into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the Free Software Foundation at 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139. We have not yet worked out a simple rule that can be stated here, but we will often permit this. We will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software.

Your comments and suggestions about our licensing policies and our software are welcome! Please contact the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, or call (617) 876-3296.

NO WARRANTY

BECAUSE GNU ELIB IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, WE PROVIDE ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE STATE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING, FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION, INC, INGE WALLIN AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE GNU ELIB "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF GNU ELIB IS WITH YOU. SHOULD GNU ELIB PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW WILL INGE WALLIN, THE FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION, INC., AND/OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND REDISTRIBUTE GNU ELIB AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY LOST PROFITS, LOST MONIES, OR OTHER SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS) GNU ELIB, EVEN IF YOU HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY CLAIM BY ANY OTHER PARTY.