bug#18205: Obsolete patterns in auto-mode-alist

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 13:02:26 +0100
> From: Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>
> Cc: 18205@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> On 7 August 2014 03:51, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> > > Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2014 23:05:33 +0100
> > > From: Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>
> > > Cc: 18205@debbugs.gnu.org
> > >
> > > If "_emacs" is to be supported, surely other similar patterns should
> > > be added for other dot files?
> >
> > Which patterns are those?
> >
> 
> For example, the patterns for bash's dot-files.

It was never required, and nowadays the MS-DOS build does not get any
features added, especially if no one asked for them.

> > Why do you think we support _emacs for DOS and Windows?
> >
> 
> I'm not sure why you're asking me, you're the DJGPP maintainer! If you
> meant it as an exercise, then I'd say: I have no idea where we support it
> on Windows, where, post-Win 3.x (which we don't support), ".emacs" is a
> valid filename.

We support _emacs on Windows because the Windows Explorer used to
dislike files with a leading dot, pretending they didn't exist or
couldn't be created.

A release or two ago, we deprecated _emacs on Windows, but we still
didn't remove support for it.

> I understood that DJGPP had long filename support too, but maybe that's not
> universal?

Only on Windows, or with a special driver.  Not on plain DOS.

> In which case, not only "_emacs", but other GNU dotfiles should
> surely be supported with a leading "_"?

In principle, yes.  But this is all ad-hoc, not universal.

> In other words, it looks like a quick hack to support the most
> commonly-edited Emacs file that would suffer from this problem. I can't
> tell whether it's still needed, and if it is, it should be extended
> systematically.

See above: _emacs is still needed.