Function: message

message is a function defined in editfns.c.

Signature

(message FORMAT-STRING &rest ARGS)

Documentation

Display a message at the bottom of the screen.

The message also goes into the *Messages* buffer, if message-log-max is non-nil. (In keyboard macros, that's all it does.) Return the message.

In batch mode, the message is printed to the standard error stream, followed by a newline.

The first argument is a format control string, and the rest are data to be formatted under control of the string. Percent sign (%), grave accent (`) and apostrophe (') are special in the format; see format-message for details. To display STRING without special treatment, use (message "%s" STRING).

If the first argument is nil or the empty string, the function clears any existing message; this lets the minibuffer contents show. See also current-message.

Probably introduced at or before Emacs version 19.29.

Aliases

bookmark-maybe-message (obsolete since 27.1) edebug-message

Source Code

// Defined in /usr/src/emacs/src/editfns.c
{
  if (NILP (args[0])
      || (STRINGP (args[0])
	  && SBYTES (args[0]) == 0))
    {
      message1 (0);
      return args[0];
    }
  else
    {
      Lisp_Object val = Fformat_message (nargs, args);
      message3 (val);
      return val;
    }
}