CDPATH problem reappears when using octave-2.9.9 from Emacs 23

[John W. Eaton]

On 20-Oct-2006, Michel Salim wrote:

| --------
| Bug report for Octave 2.9.9 configured for x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu
| 
| Description:
| -----------
| 
| When running Octave 2.9.9 from Emacs (using the CVS unicode-2 branch here),
| using M-x run-octave, I get this error:
| 
|   "No such directory found via CDPATH environment variable"
| 
| This does not occur after I downgraded Octave to 2.9.8. The problem occurs 
both
| on a Fedora Core 6 (prerelease) machine on x86_64 and on a Fedora Core 5
| machine on i386.
| 
| The problem also does not occur when using the stable 21.4 release of Emacs
| 
| Repeat-By:
| ---------
| 
|   * Install CVS version of emacs from the emacs-unicode-2 branch
|   * Start Emacs
|   * M-x run-octave

Is there an Emacs expert on the list who can do this?  I don't have
time for it.

In any case, I looked at the Emacs lisp files that are distributed
with the pre-release of Emacs that I am using and it appears that this
message could come from the cd function.

Is there a cd command in any of your Octave startup files (user or
system) that is trying to change to a directory that doesn't exist?

The function in the Octave Emacs mode (at least the one distributed
with Octave) that calls cd is

  (defun inferior-octave-directory-tracker (string)
    "Tracks `cd' commands issued to the inferior Octave process.
  Use \\[inferior-octave-resync-dirs] to resync if Emacs gets confused."
    (cond
     ((string-match "^[ \t]*cd[ \t;]*$" string)
      (cd "~"))
     ((string-match "^[ \t]*cd[ \t]+\\([^ \t\n;]*\\)[ \t\n;]*" string)
      (cd (substring string (match-beginning 1) (match-end 1))))))

This function is set as the comint-input-filter-functions, so I think
it will scan all input passed to Octave from Emacs.

jwe