On Thu, Sep 29, 2005 at 07:31:04PM -0400, Richard M. Stallman wrote:
>     So, I would conclude, that there is no bug at all.  Emacs can't
>     possibly know, that the "Local Variables:" block isn't meant to be
>     interpreted in the diff file. =20
> 
> Hmm.  It still feels like a bug to me, and I want to find a way to
> fix it.

I agree, that it would be nice, if it could be fixed -- still wouldn't
call it a bug.  Emacs acts exactly as one would expect from the
documentation.
 
> One idea is to restrict what strings can be used as the "prefix"
> in a local variables list, so that local variables lists in diff output
> are not obeyed.

I'm afraid it won't be that easy.  Typical prefix chars in diffs are
"-", "+" and "!" most (all?) of them are used for comments in some
languages (eg. Ada, Postscript).  Even worse: context lines aren't
prefixed at all.

I think that emacs would need to know, what type of file it processes,
to use a sensible set of allowed prefix chars -- but how?  

The given example "bigfile" had no suffix in the file name, the first
line wasn't starting with "diff" or something else saying "hey look,
I'm a diff file" and the local variables list, which normally is a way
to tell emacs "don't guess, just use FOO mode" is not meant to be
interpreted...

cheers
sascha
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