Re: woman doesn't work if current buffer's directory doesn't exist

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
> Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 21:07:03 -0500
> Cc: address@hidden
> Reply-To: address@hidden
> 
>     This should probably be fixed in call-process (I can't use
>     shell-command-on-region to pipe a region of a buffer through a shell
>     command if default-directory doesn't exist, for example, and I'd like
>     to be able to).  Perhaps default-directory could default to the value
>     of temporary-file-directory if it doesn't exist.
> 
> It would be easy to change what call-process does when
> default-directory does not exist.  What is the best thing for it to do
> in that case?

There's no ``best way'', it depends on what code calls call-process.
In some cases, you could bind default-directory to something sensible
(e.g., invocation-directory), in others you _must_ fail, because the
command arguments could use something like "./foo/bar" which precludes
us from changing directories.

So I think this problem cannot be solved inside call-process, but
instead an application (WoMan in this case) should cater to such
situations, where it indeed doesn't matter what is the value of
default-directory.

Another possibility would be to add an optional argument to
call-process, which, when non-nil, will bind default-directory to some
value that is guaranteed to be an existing directory, if
default-directory is nil.  Applications like WoMan could then use that
optional argument.