wrong inbox accessed by rmail in GNU Emacs 20.7.1

[Olivier Danvy]

This bug report will be sent to the Free Software Foundation,
 not to your local site managers!!
Please write in English, because the Emacs maintainers do not have
translators to read other languages for them.

In GNU Emacs 20.7.1 (sparc-sun-solaris2.7, X toolkit)
 of Tue Feb 20 2001 on forint
configured using `configure  --prefix=/usr/local --with-pop 
'--infodir=$(datadir)/emacs/$(version)/info' --sharedstatedir=/tmp 
--with-gcc=yes --with-x11=yes --with-x-toolkit=athena'

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

==========

Actions and symptoms:

1. I access a non-existent file "/users/danvy/RMAIL.test" with rmail-input.
   (As a result, an empty RMAIL file is created, with content
        BABYL OPTIONS: -*- rmail -*-
        Version: 5
        Labels:
        Note:   This is the header of an rmail file.
        Note:   If you are seeing it in rmail,
        Note:    it means the file has no messages in it.
   )

2. I invoke the command set-rmail-inbox-list to specify a list of inbox
   files for "RMAIL.test".  I specify a single inbox file,
   "/users/danvy/mbox.test".
   (Now the content of RMAIL.test is
        BABYL OPTIONS: -*- rmail -*-
        Version: 5
        Labels:
        Note:   This is the header of an rmail file.
        Note:   If you are seeing it in rmail,
        Note:    it means the file has no messages in it.
        Mail: /users/danvy/mbox.test
   )

3. I put some Unix-formatted mail in "/users/danvy/mbox.test".

4. I type `g' while editing "RMAIL.test".  The message
        Getting mail from /users/danvy/mbox.test...
   briefly appears.

   However, "/users/danvy/mbox.test" is ignored.  Instead, the mail from
   "/usr/spool/mail/danvy" is fetched (and "/usr/spool/mail/danvy" is
   emptied).  This is inconsistent with emacs's Info files.

----------

Further information -- the right thing occurs on my laptop:

At the university, we are using
        GNU Emacs 20.7.1 (sparc-sun-solaris2.7, X toolkit)
        of Tue Feb 20 2001 on forint
and more precisely
        /usr/local/share/emacs/20.7/lisp/mail/rmail.el

On my laptop (running Red Hat Linux), I am using
        GNU Emacs 20.3.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit)
        of Mon Aug 31 1998 on ufleku.daimi.aau.dk
        configured using `configure  --prefix=/usr/local --with-pop 
'--infodir=$(datadir)/emacs/$(version)/info' --sharedstatedir=/tmp 
--with-gcc=yes --with-x11=yes --with-x-toolkit=athena'
and more precisely
        /usr/local/share/emacs/20.3/lisp/mail/rmail.el

Repeating the four steps above leads to the right thing:

4. I type `g' while editing RMAIL.test.  The message
        Getting mail from /users/danvy/mbox.test...
   briefly appears.

   Then, "/usr/spool/mail/danvy" is ignored.  Instead, the mail from
   "/users/danvy/mbox.test" is fetched (and "/users/danvy/mbox.test" is
   emptied).  This is consistent with emacs's Info files.

----------

Conclusion:

A bug seems to have been introduced in the upgrade from 20.3 to 20.7.  I
have compared the two versions of rmail.el, and it is not obvious what is
going wrong.  Perhaps in the definition of rmail-insert-inbox-text?

----------

All the best,   -- Olivier Danvy

==========

Recent input:
M-x r e p o r t - e tab return

Recent messages:
Loading vm-autoload...
Loading vm-autoload...done
Loading derived...
Loading derived...done
Loading finger...
Loading finger...done
For information about the GNU Project and its goals, type C-h C-p.
Loading emacsbug...
Loading emacsbug...done