Re: miniaturising the file name displayed.

[Kevin Rodgers <ihs_4664@yahoo.com>]

Abi wrote:
 > yup, but i'd like to see ~/../../usr/etc/ when i access other files as
 > well.
 > or more preferable, the absolute path, or the path relative to my home
 > directory or the one from my CWD, whichever is shorter. I know this is
 > too much in the asking, but then if there is some elisp code to do
 > this, i'd be glad to add it to my .emacs.

In emacs, your current working directory is different for every buffer
(default-directory is a buffer local variable), so every path is
relative to the default directory.  If you don't want the directory
included in the minibuffer, set insert-default-directory to nil.

But here's an attempt to always prompt you with a path relative to your
home directory:

(defadvice find-file (before read-relative-file-name activate)
   ;; -literally, -other-window, -other-frame,
   ;; -read-only, -read-only-other-window, -read-only-other-frame
   "Always read FILENAME relative to ~."
   (interactive (list (read-file-name "Find file: "
				     (file-relative-name default-directory "~"))
		     (prefix-numeric-value current-prefix-arg))))

-- 
Kevin Rodgers