Re: read-file-name

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

Elvin Peterson <elvin_peterson@yahoo.com> writes:

> I have done that, although it only seems to make a difference for VMS.

filename completion behavior under vms depends on emacs version.
historically, that piece of code was developed apart from the unixoid
filename completion code, the rationale probably being that less gray
hairs would thus be produced.  well, now we have all these colorful
dyes[1] so it turns out the best hair to play w/ is the gray kind, i.e.,
the well-aged and better-maintained mainstream codebase.

fwiw, for the work-in-progress emacs 21.x port[2], which re-integrates
the filename completion implementations (albeit imperfectly due to
axiomatic differences), i believe you can coax analogous behavior under
both unix and vms for the non-nested RELDIR case by using the construct:

  (read-file-name PROMPT (expand-file-name RELDIR))

you can also try fiddling w/ the rest of the `read-file-name' args, to
override the (heuristic, fallable, unix-assuming) defaults.

thi


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[1] such as handlers triggering on stylized filenames,
    filenames w/ non-ASCII chars, etc.
[2] http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/EmacsOnVMS