version control and nonexistent file

[Roland Winkler]

In GNU Emacs 21.1.1 (i386-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars)
 of 2002-02-01 on tfkp12
configured using `configure  --prefix=/nfs/common --libexecdir=/nfs/common/lib 
--bindir=/nfs/common/lib/emacs/21.1/bin/i686-Linux 
--mandir=/nfs/common/share/man --infodir=/nfs/common/share/info --with-gcc 
--with-pop --with-x --with-x-toolkit=athena i386-pc-linux'
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: POSIX
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_US
  locale-coding-system: iso-latin-1
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: nil


Suppose file ~/foo is under version control (i.e., I have a file
~/RCS/foo,v) but there is no file ~/foo itself.

No I want to create a file ~/foo. So I start emacs --no-init-file
and execute `C-x C-f ~/foo'.

Then emacs asks:

  "File foo was lost; check out from version control? (yes or no)"

I type `no'.

This gives me the following backtrace.

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (wrong-type-argument stringp nil)
  string-match(".r-..-..-." nil)
  vc-rcs-state-heuristic("/nfs/tfkp00/winkler/foo")
  apply(vc-rcs-state-heuristic "/nfs/tfkp00/winkler/foo")
  vc-call-backend(RCS state-heuristic "/nfs/tfkp00/winkler/foo")
  vc-state("/nfs/tfkp00/winkler/foo")
  vc-default-mode-line-string(RCS "/nfs/tfkp00/winkler/foo")
  apply(vc-default-mode-line-string RCS "/nfs/tfkp00/winkler/foo")
  vc-call-backend(RCS mode-line-string "/nfs/tfkp00/winkler/foo")
  vc-mode-line("/nfs/tfkp00/winkler/foo")
  vc-find-file-hook()
  run-hooks(find-file-hooks)
  after-find-file(t t)
  find-file-noselect-1(#<buffer foo> "~/foo" nil nil "/leute/winkler/foo" nil)
  find-file-noselect("~/foo" nil nil 1)
  find-file("~/foo" 1)
  call-interactively(find-file)


Please let me know if there is anything else I can do.

Roland