On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[ChristopherL]

Hello,

  When I overwrite a character in a file containing blank characters
at the end my lines, Emacs takes them away on save! What can I do to
prevent the loss of the blank characters?

Thank you,
Chris

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[David Kastrup]

ChristopherL <clusardi2k@aol.com> writes:

> Hello,
>
>   When I overwrite a character in a file containing blank characters
> at the end my lines, Emacs takes them away on save! What can I do to
> prevent the loss of the blank characters?

Disable whatever stuff you put into your .emacs file in order to get
this behavior.

It is a good rule never to put anything into .emacs that you have not
understood, regardless what figure of authority suggested that it would
be a good idea to have.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[Chris Giroir]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 5:21 PM, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> ChristopherL <clusardi2k@aol.com> writes:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>>   When I overwrite a character in a file containing blank characters
>> at the end my lines, Emacs takes them away on save! What can I do to
>> prevent the loss of the blank characters?
>
> Disable whatever stuff you put into your .emacs file in order to get
> this behavior.
>

When I started my recent job this hit me when my cvs diffs were huge.
For me it was a ruby-on-rails help package that did it. Took me
forever to find it, but it's gone now!

> It is a good rule never to put anything into .emacs that you have not
> understood, regardless what figure of authority suggested that it would
> be a good idea to have.

Definitely good advice!

Chris G

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[Bernardo Bacic]

it was a dark and stormy night when ChristopherL said,
> Hello,
> 
>   When I overwrite a character in a file containing blank characters
> at the end my lines, Emacs takes them away on save! What can I do to
> prevent the loss of the blank characters?
> 

'delete-trailing-whitespace' function has the effect you describe; check if 
it's being hooked into something like 'before-save-hook in your .emacs file

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[ChristopherL]

I'm using Windows XP and can't seem to find my .emacs file!

First, on windows filenames can't begin with a dot.

I went around trying to look for what in the Unix world is called a
home directory and discovered that it's in "Application Data" some
where.

I have many of these, but they contained nothing resembling a .emacs
file.

What to do.

Thanks,
Chris

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[ChristopherL]

On Sep 11, 8:09 am, ChristopherL <clusard...@aol.com> wrote:
> I'm using Windows XP and can't seem to find my .emacs file!
>
> First, on windows filenames can't begin with a dot.

I was unable to find "_emacs" on my PC.

Chris

Can't find .emacs file on Windows (was: Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines)

[Charles Sebold]

Changing the subject line when you're changing the subject will help
more people see your question.

On 11 Sep 2008, ChristopherL wrote:

> I'm using Windows XP and can't seem to find my .emacs file!
>
> First, on windows filenames can't begin with a dot.

On modern Windows, they usually can.  I used to use .emacs (and now
~/.emacs.d/init.el) without problems.  You can also use _emacs instead
of .emacs.

From the Emacs manual (which came with Emacs, hit C-h r to get there):

,----[ <Info:(emacs)Windows HOME> ]
| The Windows equivalent of the `HOME' directory is the "user-specific
| application data directory".  The actual location depends on your
| Windows version and system configuration; typical values are
| `C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data' on Windows 2K/XP
| and later, and either `C:\WINDOWS\Application Data' or
| `C:\WINDOWS\Profiles\USERNAME\Application Data' on the older Windows
| 9X/ME systems.
| 
|    The home directory is where your init file `.emacs' is stored.  When
| Emacs starts, it first checks whether the environment variable `HOME'
| is set.  If it is, it looks for the init file in the directory pointed
| by `HOME'.  If `HOME' is not defined, Emacs checks for an existing
| `.emacs' file in `C:\', the root directory of drive `C:'(1).  If
| there's no such file in `C:\', Emacs next uses the Windows system calls
| to find out the exact location of your application data directory.  If
| that fails as well, Emacs falls back to `C:\'.
| 
|    Whatever the final place is, Emacs sets the value of the `HOME'
| environment variable to point to it, and it will use that location for
| other files and directories it normally creates in the user's home
| directory.
| 
|    You can always find out where Emacs thinks is your home directory's
| location by typing `C-x d ~/ <RET>'.  This should present the list of
| files in the home directory, and show its full name on the first line.
| Likewise, to visit your init file, type `C-x C-f ~/.emacs <RET>'.
| 
|    Because MS-DOS does not allow file names with leading dots, and
| because older Windows systems made it hard to create files with such
| names, the Windows port of Emacs supports an alternative name `_emacs'
| as a fallback, if such a file exists in the home directory, whereas
| `.emacs' does not.
`----

-- 
Charles Sebold                                    11th of September, 2008

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[Charles Sebold]

On 11 Sep 2008, ChristopherL wrote:

> I was unable to find "_emacs" on my PC.

You have to make it, or customize something (see the Options menu, for
example), for you to have one.
-- 
Charles Sebold                                    11th of September, 2008

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[ChristopherL]

On Sep 11, 8:37 am, Charles Sebold <cseb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11 Sep 2008, ChristopherL wrote:
>
> > I was unable to find "_emacs" on my PC.
>
> You have to make it, or customize something (see the Options menu, for
> example), for you to have one.
> --

I do not want to make the _emacs file itself. Please see my first
post.

Thanks,
Chris

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[Charles Sebold]

On 11 Sep 2008, ChristopherL wrote:

> I do not want to make the _emacs file itself. Please see my first
> post.

Oh, your very first post.  I didn't follow all the way back to the
beginning of the thread; sorry.  You didn't quote anything, I got lost,
my fault.

If you don't have a .emacs (or _emacs) file, then that's not the
problem.

Are you using the EmacsW32 distribution of Emacs?

What about any directories called site-lisp?  Anything there that might
match what Bernardo was talking about?

Failing those, you could try typing this into the scratch buffer and
hitting C-x C-e at the end of it, and posting the result:

(insert (format "\n\n%S" before-save-hook))

That would tell us if something is hooking in there, then maybe we could
begin to track down how.

I get "nil" as a response when I do this, and I don't see the behavior
you're describing.
-- 
Charles Sebold                                    11th of September, 2008

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[ChristopherL]

On Sep 11, 9:10 am, Charles Sebold <cseb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you using the EmacsW32 distribution of Emacs?
>

GNU Emacs 22.2.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600)
 of 2008-03-26 on RELEASE

> What about any directories called site-lisp?  Anything there that might
> match what Bernardo was talking about?

There are site-lisp folder,s but when I do a Windows search nothing in
them contains trailing*whitespace.

>
> Failing those, you could try typing this into the scratch buffer and
> hitting C-x C-e at the end of it, and posting the result:
>
> (insert (format "\n\n%S" before-save-hook))

> I get "nil" as a response when I do this, and I don't see the behavior
> you're describing.

I get nil also.

Chris

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[Charles Sebold]

On 11 Sep 2008, ChristopherL wrote:

> GNU Emacs 22.2.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600)
> of 2008-03-26 on RELEASE

Same as I had before I upgraded to 22.3 (and I wasn't seeing anything
then like what you describe either).  It's the official one from GNU, I
believe.  Nothing weird that could be traced back to the EmacsW32 CVS
build, then.

> There are site-lisp folder,s but when I do a Windows search nothing in
> them contains trailing*whitespace.

So it isn't likely that it's that particular function giving you this
problem, although there are ways to find out.  We'll save that for now.

> I get nil also.

OK, it's not before-save-hook then.

Wow, this is weird.

OK, next thing is to see if you have the same behavior with -Q.

From a command prompt, let's try running

C:\path\to\your\emacs\bin\runemacs.exe -Q

...and then tell us if you get exactly the same results as before.

This will run Emacs with absolutely no add-ons or customizations
whatsoever.  You and I should be able to do the same thing and get the
same results then.

I just tested this with my own copy of Emacs 22.2, and my file edits
retain whitespace and blank lines at the end of files.  If yours
doesn't, then maybe you ought to get a new copy of Emacs (22.3 came out
last week) and try that.
-- 
Charles Sebold                                     11th of September, 2008

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[ChristopherL]

On Sep 11, 11:18 am, Charles Sebold <cseb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> OK, next thing is to see if you have the same behavior with -Q.
>
> From a command prompt, let's try running
>
> C:\path\to\your\emacs\bin\runemacs.exe -Q
>
> ...and then tell us if you get exactly the same results as before.

I get the same exact behavior. All the blanks go away when I overwrite
one character and save the file!

Thanks,
Chris

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[Charles Sebold]

On 11 Sep 2008, ChristopherL wrote:

> I get the same exact behavior. All the blanks go away when I overwrite
> one character and save the file!

This is fascinating.

Is this true of any file, or just particular files?  Can you try this
with a plain text file and tell us if it happens or not?  Or attach a
file on which you see this behavior?

If it's not plain text that you're dealing with, what mode are you
editing the files in?  Is this, for example, C source code, or something
like that?

I'd be interested in the output of:

M-x describe-mode RET

...if you could send that along on one of these files.

If you see this on plain text files, I'm stumped, because I don't, -Q or
not.  I'd be inclined to blame something else on your computer at that
point, and I admit that that's a stretch.
-- 
Charles Sebold                                    11th of September, 2008

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: ChristopherL <clusardi2k@aol.com>
> Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:09:39 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> I'm using Windows XP and can't seem to find my .emacs file!

Are you sure you have one?  Maybe you need to create it first?

> First, on windows filenames can't begin with a dot.

When did you last try a file name that begins with a dot?  This
limitation was on DOS; on Windows, it's long gone.  Try it.

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[ChristopherL]

On Sep 11, 11:41 am, Charles Sebold <cseb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is this true of any file, or just particular files?  Can you try this
> with a plain text file and tell us if it happens or not?  Or attach a
> file on which you see this behavior?
>

It happens with Ada source code, but not with dot txt files.

------- Save file, copy file, then put a blank at the end of any line
in the second file

with Ada.Text_IO;
use  Ada.Text_IO;

procedure Hello_world is

begin
   Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line("Hello, world!");
end test;

>
> I'd be interested in the output of:
>
> M-x describe-mode RET
>

Without the -Q option:

Enabled minor modes: Auto-Compression Blink-Cursor Encoded-Kbd
File-Name-Shadow Global-Font-Lock Line-Number Menu-Bar Mouse-Wheel
Tool-Bar Tooltip Unify-8859-On-Encoding Utf-Translate-Cjk

(Information about these minor modes follows the major mode info.)

Fundamental mode:
Major mode not specialized for anything in particular.
Other major modes are defined by comparison with this one.

Auto-Compression minor mode (no indicator):
Toggle automatic file compression and uncompression.
With prefix argument ARG, turn auto compression on if positive, else
off.
Return the new status of auto compression (non-nil means on).

Blink-Cursor minor mode (no indicator):
Toggle blinking cursor mode.
With a numeric argument, turn blinking cursor mode on if ARG is
positive,
otherwise turn it off.  When blinking cursor mode is enabled, the
cursor of the selected window blinks.

Note that this command is effective only when Emacs
displays through a window system, because then Emacs does its own
cursor display.  On a text-only terminal, this is not implemented.

Encoded-Kbd minor mode (no indicator):
Toggle Encoded-kbd minor mode.
With arg, turn Encoded-kbd mode on if and only if arg is positive.

You should not turn this mode on manually, instead use the command
C-x RET k which turns on or off this mode
automatically.

In Encoded-kbd mode, a text sent from keyboard is accepted
as a multilingual text encoded in a coding system set by
C-x RET k.

File-Name-Shadow minor mode (no indicator):
Toggle File-Name Shadow mode.
When active, any part of a filename being read in the minibuffer
that would be ignored (because the result is passed through
`substitute-in-file-name') is given the properties in
`file-name-shadow-properties', which can be used to make
that portion dim, invisible, or otherwise less visually noticeable.

With prefix argument ARG, turn on if positive, otherwise off.
Returns non-nil if the new state is enabled.

Global-Font-Lock minor mode (no indicator):
Toggle Font-Lock mode in every possible buffer.
With prefix ARG, turn Global-Font-Lock mode on if and only if ARG is
positive.
Font-Lock mode is enabled in all buffers where `turn-on-font-lock-if-
enabled' would do it.
See `font-lock-mode' for more information on Font-Lock mode.

Line-Number minor mode (no indicator):
Toggle Line Number mode.
With arg, turn Line Number mode on if arg is positive, otherwise
turn it off.  When Line Number mode is enabled, the line number
appears in the mode line.

Line numbers do not appear for very large buffers and buffers
with very long lines; see variables `line-number-display-limit'
and `line-number-display-limit-width'.

Menu-Bar minor mode (no indicator):
Toggle display of a menu bar on each frame.
This command applies to all frames that exist and frames to be
created in the future.
With a numeric argument, if the argument is positive,
turn on menu bars; otherwise, turn off menu bars.

Mouse-Wheel minor mode (no indicator):
Toggle mouse wheel support.
With prefix argument ARG, turn on if positive, otherwise off.
Return non-nil if the new state is enabled.

Tool-Bar minor mode (no indicator):
Toggle use of the tool bar.
With numeric ARG, display the tool bar if and only if ARG is positive.

See `tool-bar-add-item' and `tool-bar-add-item-from-menu' for
conveniently adding tool bar items.

Tooltip minor mode (no indicator):
Toggle Tooltip mode.
With ARG, turn Tooltip mode on if and only if ARG is positive.
When this minor mode is enabled, Emacs displays help text
in a pop-up window for buttons and menu items that you put the mouse
on.
(However, if `tooltip-use-echo-area' is non-nil, this and
all pop-up help appears in the echo area.)

When Tooltip mode is disabled, Emacs displays one line of
the help text in the echo area, and does not make a pop-up window.

Unify-8859-On-Encoding minor mode (no indicator):
Set up translation-tables for unifying ISO 8859 characters on
encoding.

The ISO 8859 characters sets overlap, e.g. 8859-1 (Latin-1) and
8859-15 (Latin-9) differ only in a few characters.  Emacs normally
distinguishes equivalent characters from those ISO-8859 character sets
which are built in to Emacs.  This behavior is essentially inherited
from the European-originated international standards.  Treating them
equivalently, by translating to and from a single representation is
called `unification'.  (The `utf-8' coding system treats the
characters of European scripts in a unified manner.)

In this mode, on encoding -- i.e. output operations -- non-ASCII
characters from the built-in ISO 8859 and `mule-unicode-0100-24ff'
charsets are handled automatically by the coding system used if it can
represent them.  Thus, say, an e-acute from the Latin-1 charset (the
unified representation) in a buffer saved as Latin-9 will be encoded
directly to a byte value 233.  By default, in contrast, you would be
prompted for a general coding system to use for saving the file, which
can cope with separate Latin-1 and Latin-9 representations of e-acute.

Also sets hooks that arrange `translation-table-for-input' to be set
up locally.  This will often allow input generated by Quail input
methods to conform with what the buffer's file coding system can
encode.  Thus you could use a Latin-2 input method to search for
e-acute in a Latin-1 buffer.

See also command `unify-8859-on-decoding-mode'.

Utf-Translate-Cjk minor mode (no indicator):
Toggle whether UTF based coding systems de/encode CJK characters.
If ARG is an integer, enable if ARG is positive and disable if
zero or negative.  This is a minor mode.
Enabling this allows the coding systems mule-utf-8,
mule-utf-16le and mule-utf-16be to encode characters in the charsets
`korean-ksc5601', `chinese-gb2312', `chinese-big5-1',
`chinese-big5-2', `japanese-jisx0208' and `japanese-jisx0212', and to
decode the corresponding unicodes into such characters.

Where the charsets overlap, the one preferred for decoding is chosen
according to the language environment in effect when this option is
turned on: ksc5601 for Korean, gb2312 for Chinese-GB, big5 for
Chinese-Big5 and jisx for other environments.

This mode is on by default.  If you are not interested in CJK
characters and want to avoid some overhead on encoding/decoding
by the above coding systems, you can customize the user option
`utf-translate-cjk-mode' to nil.

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[ChristopherL]

On Sep 11, 11:48 am, Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org> wrote:
> When did you last try a file name that begins with a dot?  This
> limitation was on DOS; on Windows, it's long gone.  Try it.

I just tried it. I can not create a folder or a text file with a
leading dot character.

Chris

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[Charles Sebold]

On 11 Sep 2008, ChristopherL wrote:

> It happens with Ada source code, but not with dot txt files.

BINGO!

,----
| (defcustom ada-clean-buffer-before-saving t
|   "*Non-nil means remove trailing spaces and untabify the buffer before saving."
|   :type 'boolean :group 'ada)
`----

Do this, in a normal emacs session (not a -Q one):

M-x customize-variable RET ada-clean-buffer-before-saving RET

Toggle that off and save it.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
-- 
Charles Sebold                                    11th of September, 2008

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[ChristopherL]

On Sep 11, 12:19 pm, Charles Sebold <cseb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Do this, in a normal emacs session (not a -Q one):
>
> M-x customize-variable RET ada-clean-buffer-before-saving RET
>
> Toggle that off and save it.

That fixed my problem.

Thanks from the bottom of my heart,
Chris

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[Charles Sebold]

On 11 Sep 2008, ChristopherL wrote:

> That fixed my problem.

I should add, you have a .emacs file someplace now.  (Or an _emacs, or
something like that.)  Using customize will create one.  Just for future
reference.
-- 
Charles Sebold                                    11th of September, 2008

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[Joost Diepenmaat]

ChristopherL <clusardi2k@aol.com> writes:

> On Sep 11, 11:48 am, Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org> wrote:
>> When did you last try a file name that begins with a dot?  This
>> limitation was on DOS; on Windows, it's long gone.  Try it.
>
> I just tried it. I can not create a folder or a text file with a
> leading dot character.

Well, you can, but IIRC not from the "windows desktop". It's definitely
possible to create a .emacs file from emacs, for example, but most
programs that let you type a filename directly will allow it.

-- 
Joost Diepenmaat | blog: http://joost.zeekat.nl/ | work: http://zeekat.nl/

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: ChristopherL <clusardi2k@aol.com>
> Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:16:27 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> On Sep 11, 11:48 am, Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org> wrote:
> > When did you last try a file name that begins with a dot?  This
> > limitation was on DOS; on Windows, it's long gone.  Try it.
> 
> I just tried it. I can not create a folder or a text file with a
> leading dot character.

You tried with Windows Explorer, no doubt, since this is about the
only program left that has this limitation.  Try this in Emacs, and
you will see it will work.  Even from a command prompt it will work:

  C:\> echo foo > .file-with-a-leading-dot

Re: On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines

[David Combs]

In article <uiqt2lcd7.fsf@gmail.com>,
Charles Sebold  <csebold@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 11 Sep 2008, ChristopherL wrote:
>
>> It happens with Ada source code, but not with dot txt files.

Someone uses ADA?


Wow!


David

Re: Ada (was:On Edit GNU Emacs 22.2.1 Eats My Blank Characters At The End Of Lines)

[Anders Wirzenius]

dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:

> In article <uiqt2lcd7.fsf@gmail.com>,
> Charles Sebold  <csebold@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On 11 Sep 2008, ChristopherL wrote:
> >
> >> It happens with Ada source code, but not with dot txt files.
> 
> Someone uses ADA?
> 
> 
> Wow!
> 
> 
> David

If you are interested in who uses Ada (kindly note the spelling),
have a look at
http://adaic.org/atwork/index.html

-- 
Anders