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From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il>
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Subject: Re: dired-backup-diff only diffs with the latest backup
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 08:10:29 +0200 (IST)
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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.

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

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

In other words, too much flexibility is not necessarily a Good Thing.