Some major modes, such as SES, call functions that are stored in user files. (See (ses)Top, for more information on SES.) User files sometimes have poor pedigrees—you can get a spreadsheet from someone you’ve just met, or you can get one through email from someone you’ve never met. So it is risky to call a function whose source code is stored in a user file until you have determined that it is safe.
Returns nil
if form is a safe Lisp expression, or returns a list that describes why it might be unsafe. The argument unsafep-vars is a list of symbols known to have temporary bindings at this point; it is mainly used for internal recursive calls. The current buffer is an implicit argument, which provides a list of buffer-local bindings.
Being quick and simple, unsafep
does a very light analysis and rejects many Lisp expressions that are actually safe. There are no known cases where unsafep
returns nil
for an unsafe expression. However, a safe Lisp expression can return a string with a display
property, containing an associated Lisp expression to be executed after the string is inserted into a buffer. This associated expression can be a virus. In order to be safe, you must delete properties from all strings calculated by user code before inserting them into buffers.
Copyright © 1990-1996, 1998-2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU GPL license.
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Function-Safety.html