How to prevent Emacs from translating beginning of file path into "~"?

How to prevent Emacs from translating beginning of file path into "~"?

[MBR]

The Emacs command ^x-^f (find-file) fills the mini-buffer with the full 
path to the current directory and then waits for you to type the 
filename.  I often I find it a useful way to copy the current directory 
to the system's clipboard so I can paste the path into some other 
application.  For example, in Emacs I'll type:

    ^x-^f (put path to current directory into mini-buffer)
    ^a             (go to beginning of line)
    ^k             (kill from beginning to end of mini-buffer, with the
    side effect of putting that string into the system clipboard)
    ^g             (cancel out of mini-buffer)

At this point I can paste the path into any non-Emacs application by 
typing CMD-v (in OS-X) or CTRL-v (in Windows or Linux).

But there's a problem. Current versions of Emacs (I'm currently running 
Emacs 24.3.1 under OS-X) try to be smart and replace the beginning of 
the path with "~" if it matches the logged in user's home directory.  
Unfortunately, some applications don't understand paths that begin with "~".

Is it possible to configure Emacs to put the full path (beginning with 
"/") into the mini-buffer, rather than just the path from the home 
directory (beginning with "~")?

        Mark Rosenthal
        mbr@arlsoft.com

Re: How to prevent Emacs from translating beginning of file path into "~"?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2015 03:02:09 -0400
> From: MBR <mbr@arlsoft.com>
> 
> The Emacs command ^x-^f (find-file) fills the mini-buffer with the full 
> path to the current directory and then waits for you to type the 
> filename.  I often I find it a useful way to copy the current directory 
> to the system's clipboard so I can paste the path into some other 
> application.  For example, in Emacs I'll type:
> 
>     ^x-^f (put path to current directory into mini-buffer)
>     ^a             (go to beginning of line)
>     ^k             (kill from beginning to end of mini-buffer, with the
>     side effect of putting that string into the system clipboard)
>     ^g             (cancel out of mini-buffer)
> 
> At this point I can paste the path into any non-Emacs application by 
> typing CMD-v (in OS-X) or CTRL-v (in Windows or Linux).
> 
> But there's a problem. Current versions of Emacs (I'm currently running 
> Emacs 24.3.1 under OS-X) try to be smart and replace the beginning of 
> the path with "~" if it matches the logged in user's home directory.  
> Unfortunately, some applications don't understand paths that begin with "~".
> 
> Is it possible to configure Emacs to put the full path (beginning with 
> "/") into the mini-buffer, rather than just the path from the home 
> directory (beginning with "~")?

What you need instead of this complicated method is a simple command
that will copy the current buffer's default-directory to the
clipboard.  That command should use expand-file-name, which will
expand any "~" into its full absolute file name.

Re: How to prevent Emacs from translating beginning of file path into "~"?

[tomas]

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On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 11:01:56AM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2015 03:02:09 -0400
> > From: MBR <mbr@arlsoft.com>
> > 
> > The Emacs command ^x-^f (find-file) fills the mini-buffer with the full 

[...]

> What you need instead of this complicated method is a simple command
> that will copy the current buffer's default-directory to the
> clipboard.  That command should use expand-file-name, which will
> expand any "~" into its full absolute file name.

Indeed. And since I've found myself contorting my ways to achieve
that too (C-h v buffer-file-name or some such monstrosity), it seems
to be a useful thing to have. Thus a quick shot here:

  (defun copy-current-filename-as-kill ()
    (interactive)
    (kill-new
     (or (and buffer-file-name
              (expand-file-name buffer-file-name))
         "")))

Bind that to a global key like so:

  (global-set-key (kbd "C-c f") 'copy-current-filename-as-kill)

In this case it's bound to CONTROL-c f. Note that this is one of
the keys customarily reserved to users. Modfy binding to taste.

What can be modified too is the value copied to the kill ring
(mumble mumble "clipboard" mumble) when the current buffer has
no obvious file name -- I'm doing "" here (not copying anything
would be an option too, but could have surprising results when
you yank (mumble "paste" mumble) what you think was the last
file name and get half a bufferful of text, because that was
whatever you copied before).

HTH
- -- tomás
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Re: How to prevent Emacs from translating beginning of file path into "~"?

[Yuri Khan]

On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 2:49 PM,  <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:

> What can be modified too is the value copied to the kill ring
> (mumble mumble "clipboard" mumble) when the current buffer has
> no obvious file name -- I'm doing "" here

Might be beneficial to use dired-directory for dired buffers.

Re: How to prevent Emacs from translating beginning of file path into "~"?

[tomas]

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On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 03:16:07PM +0600, Yuri Khan wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 2:49 PM,  <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
> 
> > What can be modified too is the value copied to the kill ring
> > (mumble mumble "clipboard" mumble) when the current buffer has
> > no obvious file name -- I'm doing "" here
> 
> Might be beneficial to use dired-directory for dired buffers.

Yep. Nice idea. Expanded version:

  (defun copy-current-filename-as-kill ()
    (interactive)
    (let ((filename (or buffer-file-name
                        dired-directory)))
      (kill-new
       (or (and filename
                (expand-file-name filename))
           ""))))

Just extend the (or ...) to taste for more cases :-)

Thanks
- -- tomás
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Re: How to prevent Emacs from translating beginning of file path into "~"?

[Xavier Maillard]

tomas@tuxteam.de writes:

> On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 03:16:07PM +0600, Yuri Khan wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 2:49 PM,  <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
>>
>> > What can be modified too is the value copied to the kill ring
>> > (mumble mumble "clipboard" mumble) when the current buffer has
>> > no obvious file name -- I'm doing "" here
>>
>> Might be beneficial to use dired-directory for dired buffers.
>
> Yep. Nice idea. Expanded version:

Adopted. Thanks a lot !

-- Xavier.

Re: How to prevent Emacs from translating beginning of file path into "~"?

[tomas]

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On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 07:35:39AM +0200, Xavier Maillard wrote:
> 
> tomas@tuxteam.de writes:
> 
> > On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 03:16:07PM +0600, Yuri Khan wrote:

[...]

> Adopted. Thanks a lot !

C'est moi :-)
- -- t
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Re: How to prevent Emacs from translating beginning of file path into "~"?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Unfortunately, some applications don't understand paths that begin with "~".

Hard to believe.  I recommend you report these cases as bugs.


        Stefan

Re: How to prevent Emacs from translating beginning of file path into "~"?

[MBR]

On 4/10/15 8:31 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> Unfortunately, some applications don't understand paths that begin with "~".
> Hard to believe.  I recommend you report these cases as bugs.
>
>
>          Stefan
To do that I'd have to convince some standards body (IETF?, W3C?) to 
modify RFC 1630 - not bloody likely.  The applications I had in mind 
when I said this are Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, and Opera when using 
the "file" scheme.  With just a few easy-to-type keystrokes, I can copy 
the Emacs buffer's path and paste it into some browser's location bar 
after first typing "file:".  Viola - I'm looking at my desired directory!

Describing the exact keystrokes in words makes it sound complicated, but 
actually typing it is pretty easy and far less error-prone than trying 
to accurately type the full path into the location bar by hand.

In earlier versions of Emacs, this worked fine with all browsers, 
regardless of what directory my Emacs buffer was in, because Emacs 
wasn't trying to be smart about the home directory.  But some version of 
Emacs changed that, and it's been an annoyance ever since then.

    Mark