On 9/7/07, Stefan Monnier 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.