Re: Why ("/#[^/]+#\\'" . emacs-mule) ?

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:08:36 +0100
> From: Per Starbäck <per@starback.se>
> 
> Why are #autosave# files opened with the emacs-mule coding?

They are not, not in latest versions of Emacs.

> I don't use recover-file a lot. When I have to use autosave files I
> usually open them up in their own buffers and compare and copy
> "manually".
> Very often when I open them I have to immediately use
> revert-buffer-with-coding-system because they are utf8 files.

Strange that you need that.  When I do "M-x recover-this-file RET", I
get a buffer in utf-8-emacs-unix, which is what I expect.

> For a long time I have wished that the coding of those files would be
> recognised like for other files. I thought of reporting this as a bug,
> but since
> auto-coding-list (in lisp/international/mule.el) has an explicit line
> 
>     ("/#[^/]+#\\'" . emacs-mule)))
> 
> it's evidently on purpose, so instead I will ask here. What is that purpose?

The purpose is back-compatibility with auto-save files from prior
versions.  But recover-file overrides this and uses auto-save-coding,
so I'm unsure why the above matters in your case.