Re: save-current-buffer

["B. T. Raven" <nihil@nihilo.net>]

Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
> On 2008-10-18, B. T. Raven wrote:
>> Andreas Politz wrote:
>>>
>>> Is this a bug, or am I missing something ?
>>> Eval this in *scratch* buffer and you end up in the *Help* one.
>>>
>>> (save-current-buffer
>>>   (switch-to-buffer "*Help*"))
>>>
>>>
>>> GNU Emacs 22.2.1
>>>
>>>
>>> -ap
>> That's what you would expect. If you don't have an Emacs generated 
>> read-only *Help* buffer open then you will create an editable one with 
>> that name. Why does it seem like a bug? Of course the file *Help* can't 
>> be saved because the file name is illegal.
> 
>    It is? That's news to me. In fact, I just created a buffer named
>    *Help* and saved it.
> 

Using metacharacters in file names even in Gnu/Linux is deprecated. In 
MS OSes it's impossible, I think. At least it won't save *Help* on msw 
2000. I assumed (wrongly) that save-current-buffer saved the buffer to a 
file and that the argument could make some other buffer current first. 
If that were true then switch-to-buffer would be evaluated before 
save-current-buffer. Apparently the argument is instead an implied 
progn. What form this argument takes I don't know. Maybe a list.

Ed