Emacs 21.1 magic filename quoting

[Andrew Arensburger]

        Summary: Emacs refuses to read files in "/:".

        If I'm reading "files.el" correctly, Emacs prepends "/:"
to filenames to indicate that magic has been performed on the
filename, and should not be performed again, then strips off the "/:"
before opening the file.
        The problem is that under a standard AFS installation, /: is a
symbolic link to /afs/<cell-name> (/afs/glue.umd.edu, in our case).
Thus, when I try to edit "/:/a/b/c", Emacs tries to open "/a/b/c".

        Yes, I can take the "file-name-non-special" element out of
"file-name-handler-alist", but that breaks opening a file with
wildcards.
        Perhaps "\\`/#" would be a better pattern. Or, ideally, it
should be possible to pick a different prefix on a site-wide basis.
Is this desirable? Should I try to work on it and send in a patch?

-- 
Andrew Arensburger, Systems guy         University of Maryland
arensb@glue.umd.edu                     Office of Information Technology
      Zeit fliegt wie ein Pfeil, Obstfliegen haben bananen gern.