Re: Re: [brakjoller@gmail.com: setting utf-16 as file-name-coding-system locks up emacs]

[Mattis <brakjoller@gmail.com>]

> Yes, the problem is as follows:
> 
>   (file-exists-p "/home/mathias/.emacs.d/auto-save-list/") -> nil
> 
> so make-directory decides the dir needs to be created, but he first checks
> to see if the parent needs to be created as well:
> 
>   (file-exists-p "/home/mathias/.emacs.d/") -> nil
> 
> so it tris to create the parent, check its own parent:
> 
>   (file-exists-p "/home/mathias/") -> nil
> ....
>   (file-exists-p "/home/") -> nil
> ....
>   (file-exists-p "/") -> nil
> ....
>   (file-exists-p "/") -> nil
> ...
> because the parent of "/" is "/" and because after encoding in utf-16,
> even "/" doesn't exist.
> 
> Such an encoding is clearly completely wrong for such a system, so I'm not
> sure how important it is to protect oneself against such situations.

I see. But what if the test that file-exists-p does was to encode the
"test-string"
first in the same encoding? Or maybe this would be crazy, this isn't exactly
my area of expertice. :)

> After all, there are several other ways to screw oneself and this one is at
> least reasonably easy to revert.

Agree.

Anyway, the conclusion of all this seems to be that Emacs is not 100 % ready for
unicode yet so I have to avoid to try torture it with these in the
meantime... :)

/Mathias