Re: Starting multiple async processes from inside dired using &

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> writes:
>>> It seems the best option is to search and revive an existing buffer,
>>> but there is another problem: the user might want to keep the output
>>> of an old *Async Shell Command*<N> buffer and not overwrite it with
>>> the output of another process.
>
> Emacs could retain the old output, concatenating the new output into it.

That could be very confusing for someone who just wants "the output"
tho...

I think many async processes have no output tho, so maybe it's not a big
deal... (actually the "no output" thing is one reason why Emacs'
behavior WRT async process is so annoying -- Emacs seems to treat them
as if output were expected and important)

Maybe it could keep a list of previously created async output buffers,
and reuse any which are empty (and whose associated process is dead).

[E.g.:  everytime a new async process is started append its buffer to a
list.  When looking for a new async buffer, search for the first entry in
the list whose process is dead; if the buffer is empty, then reuse it,
and delete it from the list (to be added again as a new entry),
otherwise just delete it and keep searching.]

Perhaps another issue, BTW is whether Emacs should kill asynch processes
when exiting.  For the most common uses I have, it _shouldn't_, and it's
surprising and annoying when it does (I typically say "yes" to the "kill
processes?" prompt because I'm thinking of only those synchronous
processed I know about, so occasionally I end up inadvertently killing
an async process that I didn't want to...]

-Miles

-- 
My books focus on timeless truths.  -- Donald Knuth