23.0.60; ALTERNATE_EDITOR=foo emacsclient -e '(woman "emacs")' has silly semantics

23.0.60; ALTERNATE_EDITOR=foo emacsclient -e '(woman "emacs")' has silly semantics

[trentbuck]

With ALTERNATE_EDITOR set, if there is not server running, emacsclient
-e x will turn into $ALTERNATE_EDITOR x, which is wrong -- x isn't a
file!  Since emacsclient provides no way to simply ask "is there a
server?"  scripts can't safely use emacsclient -e with
ALTERNATE_EDITOR set.  I believe the correct behaviour is to for
emacsclient -e x exit with a failure status when there is no server.

In GNU Emacs 23.0.60.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.12.9)
 of 2008-03-21 on elegiac, modified by Debian
 (emacs-snapshot package, version 1:20080320-1)
configured using `configure  '--build' 'i486-linux-gnu' '--host' 'i486-linux-gnu' '--prefix=/usr' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/lib' '--localstatedir=/var' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes' '--enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs-snapshot:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/23.0.60/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.0.60/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.0.60/leim' '--with-x=yes' '--with-x-toolkit=gtk' 'build_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'host_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS=-DDEBIAN -DSITELOAD_PURESIZE_EXTRA=5000 -g -O2''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: nil
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: nil
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Fundamental

Minor modes in effect:
  xterm-mouse-mode: t
  epa-file-mode: t
  epa-global-mail-mode: t
  epa-global-dired-mode: t
  epa-mode: t
  savehist-mode: t
  shell-dirtrack-mode: t
  icomplete-mode: t
  partial-completion-mode: t
  show-paren-mode: t
  delete-selection-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  global-auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  column-number-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
ESC x r e p o r t SPC e m a c s SPC b u g RET

Recent messages:
Skipping dictionaries-common setup for emacs-snapshot
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50dictionaries-common.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50dpkg-dev-el.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50emacs-goodies-el.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50festival.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50psvn.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50python-docutils.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50w3m-el-snapshot.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/51debian-el.el (source)...done
For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.