Ian Eure <ian@digg.com> writes:

> I want to put backups of files I edit via Tramp on my local machine,
> rather than on the remote one, since I expect this to be a bit faster.

There is an error in Tramp (thanks for reporting!). The appended patch
shall fix it; likely you need to adjust the line numbers, because it is
for Tramp 2.1.16-pre.

Then you can simply say

(add-to-list 'backup-directory-alist
             (cons tramp-file-name-regexp "~/.emacs.d/backups/"))

I'll commit it later today to the Emacs and Tramp CVS repositories.

>  - Ian

Best regards, Michael.