D Tips and Conventions

This chapter describes no additional features of Emacs Lisp. Instead it gives advice on making effective use of the features described in the previous chapters, and describes conventions Emacs Lisp programmers should follow.

You can automatically check some of the conventions described below by running the command M-x checkdoc RET when visiting a Lisp file. It cannot check all of the conventions, and not all the warnings it gives necessarily correspond to problems, but it is worth examining them all. Alternatively, use the command M-x checkdoc-current-buffer RET to check the conventions in the current buffer, or checkdoc-file when you want to check a file in batch mode, e.g., with a command run by M-x compile RET.

• Coding Conventions		Conventions for clean and robust programs.
• Key Binding Conventions		Which keys should be bound by which programs.
• Programming Tips		Making Emacs code fit smoothly in Emacs.
• Compilation Tips		Making compiled code run fast.
• Warning Tips		Turning off compiler warnings.
• Documentation Tips		Writing readable documentation strings.
• Comment Tips		Conventions for writing comments.
• Library Headers		Standard headers for library packages.