Re: shell-dir-cookie-re in Emacs 24

[Chong Yidong <cyd@gnu.org>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> Emacs 24 has this in NEWS:
>> *** New variable `shell-dir-cookie-re'.
>> If set to an appropriate regexp, Shell mode can track your cwd by
>> reading it from your prompt.
>
>> Could you explain what the purpose of this is?  The docstring says "It
>> can be used instead of or in addition to `dirtrack-mode'", but what does
>> it do that dirtrack-mode doesn't already do?
>
> IIRC it's a poorly designed feature which should really be merged with
> dirtrack-mode (it's basically a lighter-weight version of
> dirtrack-mode, I think).  The main distinguishing feature is that
> shell-dir-cookie-re tries to work even if the prompt does not contain
> an absolute directory (e.g. I use it with prompts which only contain
> the last 2 elements of the absolute file name).

OK, I'll merge it into dirtrack-mode and get rid of shell-dir-cookie-re.