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I have just install a version of emacs (GNU Emacs 24.5.1 i686-pc-mingw32) on a Windows 8 Machine. On trying to open an example SML file (Standard ML Language). An error occurred:

File mode specification error: (error "Autoloading failed to define function sml-mode")

On deeper inspection the debugger shows this:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Autoloading failed to define function sml-mode")
sml-mode()
set-auto-mode-0(sml-mode nil)
set-auto-mode()
normal-mode(t)
after-find-file(nil t)
find-file-noselect-1(# "g:/example00.sml" nil nil "g:/example00.sml" ((512 4 . 8192) (48259 . 42323)))
find-file-noselect("g:/example00.sml" nil nil nil)
find-file("g:/example00.sml")
find-file-existing("g:/example00.sml")
menu-find-file-existing()
call-interactively(menu-find-file-existing nil nil)
command-execute(menu-find-file-existing)

How can I resolve this error?

Edit : I installed sml-mode via list-packages.

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  • Is the directory that contains the library that defines sml-mode in your load-path? If not, that's your problem. – Drew Feb 20 '17 at 18:02
  • @Drew How do I do that? (To be honest, I am very new to using emacs.) – krismath Feb 20 '17 at 18:04
  • See the Emacs manual, node Lisp Libraries. In a nutshell, you use (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/your/directory/") and then you use (require 'the-library). – Drew Feb 20 '17 at 18:12
  • If you installed the library using the package interface then be sure to use (package-initialize). In that case, you should not need to fiddle with load-path and require. – Drew Feb 20 '17 at 18:13
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    Put that in your init file. Start by reading about your init file. – Drew Feb 20 '17 at 21:35
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This is a problem of conflicting libraries in load-path. I think you should inspect your load-path to see if you have sml-mode directory in it twice. The first directory probably doesn't contain a definition for sml-mode and hence Emacs fails to load it from there.

You can do M-x list-load-path-shadows to see if some sml-mode like file is shadowing the original file with the right definitions.

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