Robustness problem in tramp.el

[<christian.lynbech@tieto.com>]

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I have stumbled across a slight problem in `tramp-handle-insert-directory' in
tramp.el.

When operating against a system where `ls' support "--dired", there is
some code to iterate across the line of data tagged with
//DIRED//. However, after seeing the tag (with `looking-at') it uses
among other things `forward-word' to reposition itself which will fail
if the user has modified the default syntax table in certain ways (which
was what I was doing and then was surprised to see tramp fail).

One could perhaps argue that there are some deeply rooted assumptions
about `/' not being a word constituent character but apart from the fact
that I do not believe I have seen it documented anywhere that one cannot
change the default syntax allocations, it is rather silly to have such a
dependency in tramp when it is so easy to have a more robust solution.

I have attached a diff with a proposal for a fix.


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--- tramp.el.orig	2010-05-25 12:45:04.000000000 +0200
+++ tramp.el.new	2010-05-25 12:46:20.000000000 +0200
@@ -4150,13 +4150,12 @@
 	(forward-line -2)
 	(when (looking-at "//SUBDIRED//")
 	  (forward-line -1))
-	(when (looking-at "//DIRED//")
-	  (let ((end (tramp-compat-line-end-position))
-		(linebeg (point)))
+	(when (looking-at "//DIRED// +")
+	  (let* ((databeg (match-end 0))
+		 (end (tramp-compat-line-end-position))
+		 (linebeg (point)))
 	    ;; Now read the numeric positions of file names.
-	    (goto-char linebeg)
-	    (forward-word 1)
-	    (forward-char 3)
+	    (goto-char databeg)
 	    (while (< (point) end)
 	      (let ((start (+ beg (read (current-buffer))))
 		    (end (+ beg (read (current-buffer)))))

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------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Christian Lynbech       | christian #\@ defun #\. dk
------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Hit the philistines three times over the head with the Elisp reference manual.
                                        - petonic@hal.com (Michael A. Petonic)