Re: dired-do-touch

[Matthew Mundell]

Juri Linkov <address@hidden> writes:

> "Eli Zaretskii" <address@hidden> writes:
> > I don't understand why you insist on using an external program if
> > Emacs could easily have a primitive to do the same.  I think using an
> > Emacs primitive is faster, in addition to being more portable.
>
> I don't see a reason why changing file time should differ from
> operations changing other file attributes like mode, owner and
> group.

So you're suggesting to use an external program until a date can be
entered with the version of dired-do-touch which uses a primitive?  It
sounds like a good idea.

The set-file-times primitive can still be installed.

> I don't insist on using external programs.  If Emacs primitives are
> faster, then other dired commands for changing other file attributes
> should be modified to use Emacs primitives too.
>
> > The patch to add set-file-times is already reviewed by at least 2
> > Emacs maintainers, and is IMHO ready for being checked in.
>
> It don't allow to change file times to values other than current time.

The primitive allows any time to be set.  However, the dired-do-time
patch which uses the primitive always uses the current time.  For this
to accept an arbitrary time it needs to parse the time from a
user-supplied string.  Is there a Lisp function which does this?