bug#18205: Obsolete patterns in auto-mode-alist

[Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>]

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On 6 August 2014 19:01, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2014 00:58:04 +0100
> > From: Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>
> >
> >      ;; .emacs or .gnus or .viper following a directory delimiter in
> >      ;; Unix, MSDOG or VMS syntax.
> >      ("[]>:/\\]\\..*\\(emacs\\|gnus\\|viper\\)\\'" . emacs-lisp-mode)
> >      ("\\`\\..*emacs\\'" . emacs-lisp-mode)
> >      ;; _emacs following a directory delimiter
> >      ;; in MsDos syntax
> >      ("[:/]_emacs\\'" . emacs-lisp-mode)
> >
> > There are two non-standard spellings:
> >
> > s/MSDOG/MS-DOS/
> > s/MsDos/MS-DOS/
> >
> > Further, the second line looks like it will only match a .emacs in the
> root
> > directory
>
> No, it matches .emacs with no leading directories at all.
>

I thought these patterns were matching absolute filenames, in which case I
am not sure what "no leading directories" could mean (at least on GNU).

> Given that VMS support has been removed, can we replace the first two
> > pattern lines with a line that uses the pattern used above:
> >
> > \\(/\\|\\`\\)
>
> No, that's not enough: it will miss "c:.emacs".
>
> IMO, it's OK to remove the VMS-specific characters (AFAIK, the first 2
> in the character class), but the rest should stay.
>

OK.


> > And can we then also remove the third line, as MS-DOS syntax is not
> > treated specially anywhere else in this default value?
>
> How can you remove it, and still support _emacs as a file whose
> normal-mode is emacs-lisp?  _emacs is supported on MS-DOS and
> MS-Windows.  (I don't understand what you meant by "not supported
> specially anywhere else".)
>

Sorry, I was unclear: I meant that there doesn't seem to be special support
for MS-DOS and Windows filenames elsewhere *in auto-mode-alist* (as I put
it above, "in this default value"). If "_emacs" is to be supported, surely
other similar patterns should be added for other dot files? (The same
applies to "c:.emacs"; but again, that's not an absolute filename, which
would be "c:\.emacs".)

-- 
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