Add a comment about the significance of an asterisk as the first

character of a variable's doc string.  Reported by Donald Knuth.

diff --git a/lispref/help.texi b/lispref/help.texi
index 12beaf2e29f5784e357a9ca017018cb6c6c2081e..eeb8d9987557bcbd92e412a199eb9343d14f05f3 100644 (file)
--- a/lispref/help.texi
+++ b/lispref/help.texi
@@ -241,6 +241,11 @@ When the `track-eol' feature is doing its job, the value is 9999.
 @end group
 @end smallexample
 
+The asterisk @samp{*} as the first character of a variable's doc string,
+as shown above for the @code{goal-column} variable, means that it is a
+user option; see the description of @code{defvar} in @ref{Defining
+Variables}.
+
 @defun Snarf-documentation filename
 This function is used only during Emacs initialization, just before
 the runnable Emacs is dumped.  It finds the file offsets of the