How to use double keyboard macro, or keyboard macro of keyboard macro?

Question

First of all, I made a new keyboard macro called 'mac'.

[F3] abcd [F4]

M-x name-last-kbd-macro mac

Then, I can get 'abcd' by typing [F4] or M-x mac. I tried to get 'abcd' five times. So I made a new keyboard macro of keyboard macro.

[F3] C-u 5 M-x mac [F4]

I expected to see 'abcdabcdabcdabcdabcd' when I typed [F4]. However, keyboard macro of keyboard macro made 'abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcd' which is 10 times of 'abcd', rather than 5. What's wrong with it?

Answer 1

This looks like a bug. Using insert-kbd-macro You can look at what's actually stored in the macros:

(fset 'm
   "a")

(fset 'n
   [?\M-x ?m return ?a])

I created a macro called m that just prints 'a', then created a second macro called n that calls m. It seems the second macro records the call to m, then records the output of m as though it's keyboard input.

The only solution I can find is to create the second macro, then use edit-kbd-macro to remove the doubled text. Not very convenient, really.

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Update:

I believe this has now been fixed in the master branch, so should work from Emacs 26 on.