call-process in scratch buffer with non-existent default-directory

[Roland Winkler]

In GNU Emacs 20.4.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit)
 of Fri Oct 29 1999 on tfkp02
configured using `configure  --prefix=/nfs/common --libexecdir=/nfs/common/lib 
--bindir=/nfs/common/lib/emacs/bin/i686-Linux --with-gcc --with-pop --with-x 
--with-x-toolkit=athena'

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:


The variable default-directory is a buffer-local variable with a
non-nil value even for those special-purpose buffers that are not
visiting a file. If I rename my directories it can happen that for
such a buffer the value of default-directory becomes meaningless. I
would expect that usually this shouldn't make any problems. However,
the function call-process signals a file-error when it should insert
the output in a buffer with a meaningless value of default-directory.

For example, I get a backtrace:

Signaling: (file-error "Setting current directory" "no such file or directory" 
"/nfs/home/winkler/scratch/")
  call-process("lynx" nil t nil "-dump" "http://dict.leo.org/?search=We";)


I am not perfectly sure whether I correctly figured out the details
of this problem. However, in any case I would expect that under
these circumstances call-process should not signal a file-error.


Roland