dired not bold enough to move directories

dired not bold enough to move directories

[Dan Jacobson]

Well, gosh, if I can move a directory like this,
  $ cd /var/tmp
  $ mv affordablehost_logs ~/tmp

then why can't I remame it with R in dired?
  Move `/var/tmp/affordablehost_logs' to `/home/jidanni/tmp/affordablehost_logs' failed:
  (file-error Non-regular file is a directory /var/tmp/affordablehost_logs)

  Move failed for 1 of 1 file
          Fri Feb  7 02:10:53 2003	Buffer `tmp'

OK, supposing that emacs has conscientious objections to doing this,
then right there on C-h k R it should say so.

What do I got to do to enable this, purchase the 'warez CD?
-- 
http://jidanni.org/ Taiwan(04)25854780

Re: dired not bold enough to move directories

[John Paul Wallington]

Dan Jacobson wrote:

>  Well, gosh, if I can move a directory like this,
>    $ cd /var/tmp
>    $ mv affordablehost_logs ~/tmp
>  
>  then why can't I remame it with R in dired?

Because they are on separate partitions.
dired should behave like mv in such a case.

Re: dired not bold enough to move directories

[Luc Teirlinck]

John Paul Wallington wrote:

    Dan Jacobson wrote:

    >  Well, gosh, if I can move a directory like this,
    >    $ cd /var/tmp
    >    $ mv affordablehost_logs ~/tmp
    >
    >  then why can't I remame it with R in dired?

    Because they are on separate partitions.
    dired should behave like mv in such a case.

I understand both above lines, but it is not immediately obvious to me
what your conclusion is.  It seems to me that you agree with Dan,
because (from version `4.0' of the fileutils onward) mv no longer
cares about partitions.  (Do I understand this correctly?)  I
personally agree with Dan (and you?) too, unless there would be some
good reason for dired to behave differently from mv in this case.  (I
can not think of any, but that does, of course, not mean that there is
none.)

Sincerely,

Luc.

Re: dired not bold enough to move directories

[John Paul Wallington]

Luc Teirlinck wrote:

>      >  Well, gosh, if I can move a directory like this,
>      >    $ cd /var/tmp
>      >    $ mv affordablehost_logs ~/tmp
>      >
>      >  then why can't I remame it with R in dired?
>  
>      Because they are on separate partitions.
>      dired should behave like mv in such a case.
>  
>  I understand both above lines, but it is not immediately obvious to
>  me what your conclusion is.  It seems to me that you agree with
>  Dan, because (from version `4.0' of the fileutils onward) mv no
>  longer cares about partitions.  (Do I understand this correctly?)

Yup.

>  I personally agree with Dan (and you?) too, unless there would be
>  some good reason for dired to behave differently from mv in this
>  case.  (I can not think of any, but that does, of course, not mean
>  that there is none.)

Presently Frename_file calls rename or link (and unlink) then does:

      if (errno == EXDEV)
	{
	  Fcopy_file (file, newname,
		      /* We have already prompted if it was an integer,
			 so don't have copy-file prompt again.  */
		      NILP (ok_if_already_exists) ? Qnil : Qt, Qt);
	  Fdelete_file (file);
	}

which deals with renaming files across file systems.  Maybe it should
recursively copy directories too?  If not, then dired could handle it
in lisp instead.