Re: dired-backup-diff only diffs with the latest backup

[Dan Jacobson <jidanni@dman.ddts.net>]

>>>>> "Eli" == Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:

Eli> On 24 Nov 2002, Dan Jacobson wrote:

>> ESC = runs the command dired-backup-diff
>> Diff this file with its backup file or vice versa.
>> Uses the latest backup, if there are several numerical backups.
>> 
>> How inflexible.

Eli> The "Uses the latest backup" thing just means that the latest backup is 
Eli> _suggested_as_the_default_ when Emacs prompts for the second file name.  
Eli> There's nothing in the world that prevents you from editing, say, 
Eli> "foo.bar.~123~" into "foo.bar.~1~" in the minibuffer when you are at that 
Eli> prompt.

Prompts for the second file: I bet you are thinking about the = command, not ESC =

Even with C-u ESC = all one is given to modify is "-c"

I bet you think my backup files are right there handy in the same
dir., however, I (require 'backup-dir)

When I hit ESC = I see
cd ~/analog/
diff -c /home/jidanni/.backups/analog.cfg\!\!\!home\!jidanni\!analog\!.\~24\~ /home/jidanni/analog/analog.cfg

I don't see any feature in emacs that is going to help me from telling
emacs by hand the whole path of ....~23~, in case I want to diff with
it instead of the latest, even though emacs knows where the latest,
24, is.

Eli> By contrast, I'm quite sure that the special meaning of the values 1, 2, 
Eli> 3, etc. of ARG will be remembered by exactly 2 persons in the whole world: 
Eli> Dan Jacobson and the programmer who will implement his suggestion.

OK, then how about ESC 23 ESC = do the diff with backup #23

Or maybe one should diff 23 with 24, not with the current version.

>>>>> "A" == Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de> writes:

A> Not necessary.  Just type M-= on the backup you want to diff with.

I bet you think my backup files are right there handy in the same
dir., however, I 
(require 'backup-dir)
(setq bkup-backup-directory-info
      '(("/home/jidanni/.*"
	 "/home/jidanni/.backups/" ok-create full-path prepend-name)
	("^/[^/:]+:"     ".backups/") ; handle EFS files specially: don't
	("^/[^/:]+:"     "./")        ; search-upward... its very slow
	(t               ".backups/"
                         full-path prepend-name search-upward)))