Re: [PATCH] lisp/files.el and lisp/buf-menu.el

[Stefan Monnier]

> For buff-menu.el how would you feel about a patch that:

> Declares LIST-FILES-DIRECTORY obsolete.

> Declares LIST-FILES-DIRECTORY to be an alias for
> LIST-FILES-DESCRIPTION.

> Otherwise renames LIST-FILES-DIRECTORY in lisp/*.el lisp/*/*.el

It might be OK.  I haven't thought about it enough recently, but I know
that list-files-directory is a poor name and the lack of doc has bugged
me when I used it in PCL-CVS, so I come from a favorable background.

I'm not yet sure whether list-files-description is really a name I like
(I'm not sure whether its name should bind it so closely to "list"ing).

> I get that PCL-CVS gets away with a let-binding
> for BUFFER-FILE-MODE but that strikes me as a kludge
> and a kludge with the potential to break things.

Emacs is made of those.

> I think that third party code should be free to assume that if
> BUFFER-FILE-MODE is not nil then it is, as the name implies, the name
> of a (potentially remote) file.

It's already not true for members of archives opened via tar-mode.el
and arc-mode.el.

> At the same time, I'm apparently not the first person that wants
> a mechanism to tweak what SET-AUTO-MODE does by providing an override
> string to use against the auto-mode alist.

I don't understand what you mean.


        Stefan