all messages for Emacs-related lists mirrored at yhetil.org
 help / color / mirror / code / Atom feed
From: Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>
To: 17916@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#17916: 24.4.50; `write-region' doc for numeric APPEND arg
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2014 09:14:07 -0700 (PDT)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <d50aa5b4-8835-470d-b190-eb664e864bd3@default> (raw)

The doc for `write-region' could be clearer, in particular wrt a numeric
APPEND arg.  It could explicitly say that it always _overwrites_ the
existing file contents, rather than _inserting_ the region text at the
given position.

In (emacs) `Misc File Ops', we say:

  `M-x write-region' is the inverse of `M-x insert-file'; it copies
  the contents of the region into the specified file.

"Copy into" is at best ambiguous here, and "inverse of" is incorrect.
We should say explicitly that it overwrites the existing file contents
with the region contents.  (And that is not the case of `insert-file'.)

Similarly, in (elisp) `Writing to Files' we say that it "writes the
region ... into the file..." - the same ambiguous phrase.  And wrt
APPEND we say:

  If APPEND is a number, `write-region' seeks to that byte offset from
  the start of the file and writes the data from there.

Because of the word "seek", this will be clear to some programmers, but
it might not be clear to others.  We should make clear that
`write-region' overwrites existing bytes in the file; it does not insert
the region text at the given position.

In sum, make clear that you cannot use `write-region' to insert the
region text into the file (except by appending it).

In GNU Emacs 24.4.50.1 (i686-pc-mingw32)
 of 2014-06-28 on ODIEONE
Bzr revision: 117431 rgm@gnu.org-20140628015517-eku6hj8mpgcvfnso
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 6.1.7601
Configured using:
 `configure --prefix=/c/Devel/emacs/snapshot/trunk
 --enable-checking=yes,glyphs 'CFLAGS=-O0 -g3'
 LDFLAGS=-Lc:/Devel/emacs/lib 'CPPFLAGS=-DGC_MCHECK=1
 -Ic:/Devel/emacs/include''





             reply	other threads:[~2014-07-03 16:14 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2014-07-03 16:14 Drew Adams [this message]
2014-07-03 16:39 ` bug#17916: 24.4.50; `write-region' doc for numeric APPEND arg Eli Zaretskii
2021-07-14  9:28   ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
     [not found] <<d50aa5b4-8835-470d-b190-eb664e864bd3@default>
     [not found] ` <<83wqbu1jmy.fsf@gnu.org>
2014-07-03 17:23   ` Drew Adams

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=d50aa5b4-8835-470d-b190-eb664e864bd3@default \
    --to=drew.adams@oracle.com \
    --cc=17916@debbugs.gnu.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this external index

	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git
	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git

This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.