Re: Shell commands in deleted directories

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Sun, 13 Feb 2011 23:05:56 +0100 Antoine Levitt <antoine.levitt@gmail.com> wrote: 

AL> 13/02/11 22:34, Ted Zlatanov
>> On Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:21:38 +0100 Antoine Levitt <antoine.levitt@gmail.com> wrote: 
>> 
AL> 13/02/11 22:07, Paul Eggert
>>>> On 02/13/2011 01:02 PM, Antoine Levitt wrote:
>>>>> +	/* If current_dir is unreachable (typically, does not exist), use
>>>>> +	   ~/ as default */
>>>> 
>>>> This looks like a bad idea.  Suppose I run the shell
>>>> command "rm *" in a deleted directory?
>>>> The change would cause me to remove files in
>>>> my home directory.  Better safe than sorry.
>> 
AL> Mmh, true. But then again, if you're using "rm *" as a shell command
AL> without being absolutely sure where you are, you're just asking for
AL> trouble.
>> 
>> I am strongly against this kind of surprise and hope it doesn't go into
>> Emacs.

AL> I wasn't suggesting it be merged after the objection Paul raised (see
AL> the other half of my post).

I agreed with you :)

AL> In the end, it's probably better to be handled by the user or by
AL> error-catching from calling code. Maybe there should be some kind of
AL> checks when creating new buffers though? Like if a new buffer is
AL> created that isn't associated with a file, then if its pwd doesn't
AL> exist, it's reset to ~/?

There are many situations where this solution would be a problem.  I
don't know if there is a good solution that doesn't involve lots of
error-catching at some level.

Ted