Re: Don't concat directories to file names

["Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com>]

On 6/21/07, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> What these files all have in common is that they are used
> in special ways by Emacs.

Which is so generic as to not mean anything IMO.

> The function could be `locate-user-emacs-directory'

The function does not locate a directory, but a file. It's intended to
return the path for a filename, i.e., if a module wants to save its
data in ".my-module" and your $HOME is /home/you, and
`user-emacs-directory' is at default value, then

 (function-without-a-name ".my-module")

will return "/home/you/.my-module" if it exists, else
"/home/you/.emacs.d/.my-module" (creating /home/you/.emacs.d/ as
needed).

With the second optional argument NEW-NAME:

 (function-without-a-name ".my-module" "module-data")

in the second case (when ~/.my-module does not exist) it will return
"/home/you/.emacs.d/module-data".

So locate-user-emacs-directory does not describe what the function
does, and locate-user-emacs-file would be confusing: it does not
return the path of the "emacs file" (presumable .emacs).

             Juanma