Re: file-precious-flag not taken seriously enough?

[Chong Yidong]

Karl Fogel <address@hidden> writes:

>     (let ((dir (file-name-directory buffer-file-name)))
>       (if (and file-precious-flag
>              (file-writable-p dir))
>         ;; If file is precious, write temp name, then rename it.
>         ;; This requires write access to the containing dir,
>         ;; which is why we don't try it if we don't have that access.
>         (let ((realname buffer-file-name)
>               tempname succeed
>               (umask (default-file-modes))
>               (old-modtime (visited-file-modtime)))
>       [...continue on to write directly to the file...]
>
> The documentation for `file-precious-flag' doesn't say anything about
> it only applying if the containing directory is writeable.  But that
> seems to be how we treat it, in the conditional above.
>
> Is this just a bug?

If the directory is not writable, there is no way to obey
file-precious-flag.  That means that the only alternative is to signal
an error.  Off the top of my head, I think it's better to fall back on
the usual file saving method instead, because that's almost always what
the user would want.