On 9/7/07, Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> wrote:
Worse yet: creating backup files in /tmp would be a security hole:
some other user seeing you're currently editing /tmp/foo could create
a symlink /tmp/foo~ to some interesting place and then when you save your
file the backup could be placed at that interesting place chosen by
the attacker.
If that is the case, then that is an argument for not backing backups in any world (or group?) writeable place. It's not specific to /tmp.
I often work in /tmp/ on files that I know I won't want to keep. I still find backup files useful, even for these temporary files. Yes, I can use C-x C-w instead, but that's something I have to remember to do each time, *before* I start editing, otherwise it's too late. I find it a lot more convenient to have Emacs automatically make backup files, and think it would be good to have a user-configurable option to do so. Not that it matters to me personally, I can put some magic Emacs Lisp in my .emacs to get the effect I want.
Chris.