GNU bug report logs - #77973
30.1; `which-key' breaks `string-rectangle' after popup shown

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alcor <alcor <at> tilde.club>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: 30.1; `which-key' breaks `string-rectangle' after popup shown
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2025 22:00:10 +0200

1. Start Emacs (30.1) with emacs -Q
2. Hit M-< or C-<home> to go to the beginning of the scratch buffer
3. Hit C-x SPC (`rectangle-mark-mode') and do any rectangular selection
4. Do M-x which-key-mode to enable which-key mode
5. Hit C-x (wait for the which-key popup to appear) *then* continue with
r t (`string-rectangle')

Expected result:

The `string-rectangle' command behaves normally, as specified in the
manual.

Observed result:

The following error messages are printed in the *Messages* buffer:

region-beginning: Lisp nesting exceeds ‘max-lisp-eval-depth’: 1601
rectangle--region-beginning: Lisp nesting exceeds ‘max-lisp-eval-depth’


In GNU Emacs 30.1 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.41,
 cairo version 1.18.0) of 2025-03-17 built on lcy02-amd64-052
Repository revision: dcd52678035563e43e3ed80dadb9f3970536f692
Repository branch: master
System Description: Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS

Configured using:
 'configure --prefix=/snap/emacs/current/usr --with-x-toolkit=gtk3
 --without-xaw3d --with-modules --with-cairo
 --with-native-compilation=aot --with-pgtk --with-xinput2
 --with-tree-sitter 'CFLAGS=-isystem
 /build/emacs/parts/emacs/install/usr/include -isystem
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Configured features:
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Important settings:
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  value of $XMODIFIERS: @im=ibus
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

Major mode: Messages

Minor modes in effect:
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  transient-mark-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t

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Message #8 received at 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alcor <alcor <at> tilde.club>
To: 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Screencast illustrating the issue
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2025 22:55:19 +0200

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Attached is a short video/screencast demonstrating the issue, where
steps #1-#5 are followed on a fresh `emacs -Q' session:

[77973.webm (video/webm, attachment)]

Message #11 received at 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Alcor <alcor <at> tilde.club>
Cc: 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#77973: 30.1;
 `which-key' breaks `string-rectangle' after popup shown
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2025 14:40:05 +0300

> Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2025 22:55:19 +0200
> From:  Alcor via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,
>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>
> 
> Attached is a short video/screencast demonstrating the issue, where
> steps #1-#5 are followed on a fresh `emacs -Q' session:

Thanks, but please in the future try not to change the Subject when
you respond to a bug report, because if you change the Subject, it
makes tracking the discussion a tad harder for some of us.

I've returned the Subject to its original.

Message #14 received at 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Alcor <alcor <at> tilde.club>
Cc: 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#77973: 30.1;
 `which-key' breaks `string-rectangle' after popup shown
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2025 14:40:38 +0300

> Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2025 22:55:19 +0200
> From:  Alcor via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,
>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>
> 
> Attached is a short video/screencast demonstrating the issue, where
> steps #1-#5 are followed on a fresh `emacs -Q' session:

Thanks, but please in the future try not to change the Subject when
you respond to a bug report, because if you change the Subject, it
makes tracking the discussion a tad harder for some of us.

I've now returned the Subject to its original.

Message #17 received at 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alcor <alcor <at> tilde.club>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#77973: 30.1; `which-key' breaks `string-rectangle' after popup
 shown
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2025 21:46:57 +0200

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

> I've now returned the Subject to its original.

Thanks Eli, I'm still not very familiar with the bug tracking system -
will keep that in mind.

That aside, I would like to note that the commit:

  3a8222e700304e4dff84fcdfa8ff2a4e48646c82
  Faster region-beginning and region-end for rectangle selections

Solves the issue. The actual underlying problem was the fact that the

  ; rectangle--region-beginning
  ...
  (apply #'min (mapcar #'car (region-bounds)))

  ; rectangle--region-end
  ...
  (apply #'max (mapcar #'cdr (region-bounds)))

forms in the 30.x implementations of rectangle--region-{beginning,end}
may result in a mutual recursion, as `region-bounds' calls
`region-extract-function', which calls `region-{beginning,end}' (both
advised by `rectangle--region-{beginning,end}' during a rectangular
selection).

I'm not sure why `which-key-mode' triggers this, but it seems it's
related to the `rectangle-mark-mode' state, as replacing the above forms
in `region-{beginning,end}' with:

  ; rectangle--region-beginning
  ...
  (let (rectangle-mark-mode) (apply #'min (mapcar #'car (region-bounds))))

  ; rectangle--region-end
  ...
  (let (rectangle-mark-mode) (apply #'max (mapcar #'cdr (region-bounds))))

As done in many other places in rect.el fixes the issue on 30.x -
however, I've also tried backporting
3a8222e700304e4dff84fcdfa8ff2a4e48646c82 onto 30.1 and it worked without
any issues, on top of it being faster as well.

Would it be possible to cherry-pick 3a8222e onto the emacs-30 branch so
a fix is available on 30.2? IMO, this bug is annoyingly easy to trigger
on 30.1 when using `which-key-mode' (see video in previous message), and
it's not trivial to unbreak rectangle-mark-mode after running into it,
so having it in the next bugfix release would improve things
significantly.

Cheers,
-A.

Message #20 received at 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Alcor <alcor <at> tilde.club>, Mattias Engdegård
 <mattiase <at> acm.org>
Cc: 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#77973: 30.1; `which-key' breaks `string-rectangle' after popup
 shown
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2025 14:51:34 +0300

> From: Alcor <alcor <at> tilde.club>
> Cc: 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2025 21:46:57 +0200
> 
> As done in many other places in rect.el fixes the issue on 30.x -
> however, I've also tried backporting
> 3a8222e700304e4dff84fcdfa8ff2a4e48646c82 onto 30.1 and it worked without
> any issues, on top of it being faster as well.
> 
> Would it be possible to cherry-pick 3a8222e onto the emacs-30 branch so
> a fix is available on 30.2? IMO, this bug is annoyingly easy to trigger
> on 30.1 when using `which-key-mode' (see video in previous message), and
> it's not trivial to unbreak rectangle-mark-mode after running into it,
> so having it in the next bugfix release would improve things
> significantly.

My bother with commit 3a8222e is that it uses move-to-column, which
might behave in surprising ways when there are 'display' properties,
TABs, composed characters, and other display features around.

Did someone try the new code in those cases?  If not, I'd like you or
someone else to try that first, because I'd like to avoid introducing
regressions into Emacs 30.2.

Message #23 received at 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alcor <alcor <at> tilde.club>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: Mattias Engdegård <mattiase <at> acm.org>,
 77973 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#77973: 30.1; `which-key' breaks `string-rectangle' after
 popup shown
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2025 17:33:59 +0200

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

> My bother with commit 3a8222e is that it uses move-to-column, which
> might behave in surprising ways when there are 'display' properties,
> TABs, composed characters, and other display features around.
>
> Did someone try the new code in those cases?  If not, I'd like you or
> someone else to try that first, because I'd like to avoid introducing
> regressions into Emacs 30.2.

I tested a cherry-picked 3a8222e with composite emojis and tabs and
haven't observed any differences vs. plain 30.1 (see attachment). Not
sure about "other display features" though. And 3a8222e isn't a recent
change either - it's about ~9 months old, so I'd assume it has been
incubating long enough for problems to be noticable (?).

As an alternative, the following more trivial patch can be applied onto
the emacs-30 branch. It merely binds `rectangle-mark-mode' to nil during
the `region-bounds' call to protect against infinite recursion (as done
elsewhere in rect.el):

--- lisp/rect.el
+++ #<buffer rect.el.gz>
@@ -766,7 +766,7 @@
    ((not rectangle-mark-mode)
     (funcall orig))
    (t
-    (apply #'min (mapcar #'car (region-bounds))))))
+    (apply #'min (mapcar #'car (let (rectangle-mark-mode) (region-bounds)))))))
 
 (defun rectangle--region-end (orig)
   "Like `region-end' but supports rectangular regions."
@@ -774,7 +774,7 @@
    ((not rectangle-mark-mode)
     (funcall orig))
    (t
-    (apply #'max (mapcar #'cdr (region-bounds))))))
+    (apply #'max (mapcar #'cdr (let (rectangle-mark-mode) (region-bounds)))))))
 
 (defun rectangle--extract-region (orig &optional delete)
   (cond

[rect-3a8222e-emoji.png (image/png, attachment)]

[rect-3a8222e-tabs.png (image/png, attachment)]

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