Re: testing for a remote file to include file on a Windows mapped drive

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Drew Adams" <address@hidden>
> Cc: <address@hidden>
> Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 08:55:48 -0800
> 
> > These all make sense only in the context of the features that define
> > them.  In general, Emacs does not consider files on a mounted volume
> > to be remote.  The notion of remote files is in conjunction with Emacs
> > features that access files in ways that are not the normal filesystem
> > APIs.
> >
> > It sounds like you want something entirely different
> 
> As I said, I want to know if a file name is likely to represent a remote
> file (in the Emacs sense you cited) or a file on a mapped network drive.
> 
> The reason is to avoid the time needed to access the remote machine.

What kind of access is that, and how much time does it take, that you
want to avoid it?  Do you have any numbers, even approximate ones,
that compare access to local vs remote files on mounted volumes?

> That's the same reason that most of the above were defined, but they
> don't handle the network-drive case.

Accessing a remote file via the normal filesystem API (which is what
happens with remote drives and NFS-mounted volumes) is several orders
of magnitude faster than Tramp or ange-ftp.  So I find it hard to
believe that the same primitive would fulfill both of these needs.