Re: C-x C-b and C-x C-f bugging about confirmation

[Chong Yidong]

Sam Steingold <address@hidden> writes:

> I often have dozens of buffers open, including "foo.lisp" and "foos/"
> and completion is not the panacea.
> it IS a big deal to have to kill the buffer:
> with confirm-nonexistent-file-or-buffer = t:
> C-x b fo TAB [expands to "foo"] RET [confirm?] . TAB RET ==> foo.lisp
> with confirm-nonexistent-file-or-buffer = nil:
> C-x b fo TAB [expands to "foo"] RET [new buffer] C-x k RET C-x b Up
> . TAB RET ==> foo.lisp

Sure, there are usage patterns that are going to be helped by this
change in defaults; and there are usage patterns that are going to be
hindered.  But I don't think it's obvious that either dominate.  Because
of that, this feature's inconsistency with the old minibuffer behavior
indicates that the default should be nil, I think.  Unless someone can
come up with a better way to do this.

Another point: for find-file, we have C-x C-v (find-alternative-file),
which provides an easy way to revisit a file if you visited the wrong
one.  So for file-name-completion, at least, this feature is less than
necessary.