bobvan (10/25/82)
We recently installed Steve Zimmerman's emacs on our 4.1bsd system. I was sending mail today and asked for help on the tilde escapes by typing "~?". Mail responded with "No help just now". Mail stores the help in /usr/lib/Mail.help~. Zimmerman creates backup files by appending a tilde to the edited file name. Hence he recommends you remove these files from crontab. We followed the recommendation and there went our mail help! Now I'll have to reload from the distribution tapes. Zimmerman's installation notes are very clear about how to change from tilde to some other character, but I didn't see the conflict until it was too late. All of this has gotten me to think about choice of backup file name (please no flames about whether or not backup file should even be created -- I don't like them either). How widespread is the automatic removal of files that have a leading "#"? Berkeley seems to suggest this, though rather weekly. I think I've seen reference to it in one of the vol 2a papers too. Appending any character a backup name seems rather dangerous. Doesn't it bomb on a 14 character filename? Are there any other temp file name conventions in widespread use? Perhaps we should aim for a consensus on this issue too. I'll tally opinions and post a summary if interest warrants it. Bob Van Valzah (...!decvax!ittvax!tpdcvax!bobvan)