Re: read-directory-name, the unloved

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Sorry about that, there was a syntax mistake in the patch, here's the
>> correct version http://pastebin.com/Z7fRevAV
> I got asked by mail to post the patch on the list. There it is.

Thanks.  This looks pretty good overall, although the first hunk doesn't
sound quite so simple:

> @@ -601,14 +601,8 @@
>           (if current-prefix-arg
>               (read-string "Dired listing switches: "
>                            dired-listing-switches))
> -         ;; If a dialog is about to be used, call read-directory-name so
> -         ;; the dialog code knows we want directories.  Some dialogs can
> -         ;; only select directories or files when popped up, not both.
> -         (if (next-read-file-uses-dialog-p)
> -             (read-directory-name (format "Dired %s(directory): " str)
> -                                  nil default-directory nil)
> -           (read-file-name (format "Dired %s(directory): " str)
> -                           nil default-directory nil)))))
> +         (read-directory-name (format "Dired %s(directory): " str)
> +                              nil default-directory nil))))
>  
>  ;; We want to switch to a more sophisticated version of
>  ;; dired-read-dir-and-switches like the following, if there is a way

The code you remove already used read-directory-name and deliberately
used read-file-name in some cases, so there seems to be something more
going on here.  The comment doesn't explain why we use read-file-name,
but IIRC there's an issue where we want to let the user enter a glob
pattern or something like that.
Can you try and figure out what's really going on here?


        Stefan