On Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 7:02 AM Lars Ingebrigtsen <
larsi@gnus.org> wrote:
chad <yandros@gmail.com> writes:
> I thought I saw an error here when list-directory with a directory (not file) glob (ex: ~
> /Project/emacs/*/) is followed by another list-directory, but I think the actual issue is
> that the default directory in the first case is set to something that doesn't exist, which
> messes up call-process in the second invocation of list-directory. The error I saw was:
>[...]
I'm unable to reproduce this -- if I say `C-x C-d /tmp/*/ RET' it works
fine for me...
Sorry, I was probably unclear, and my earlier hack-around was no good. The first call to list-directory works fine. It's the followup, issued from the buffer of the first, that raises the problem, because default-directory in the buffer of the first call is set to, in your example, /tmp/*/, and call-process balks when default-directory doesn't exist. To repeat, from a fresh emacs -Q:
`C-x C-d /tmp/*/ RET C-x 0 C-x C-d /tmp/ RET'.
I see "insert-directory: Setting current directory: No such file or directory, /tmp/*/" in *Messages* in emacs -Q. (In practice, with a fresh emacs -Q, sometimes I also get the same error from comp-run-async-workers, if it triggers when I'm in that buffer, which was a surprise.)
I suspect this is due to the explicit setting of default-directory at the end of list-directory:
> ;; Finishing with-output-to-temp-buffer seems to clobber default-directory.
> (with-current-buffer buffer
> (setq default-directory
> (if (file-directory-p dirname)
> (file-name-as-directory dirname)
> (file-name-directory dirname))))
In the above test case, dirname ends up as "/tmp/*/", which falls through file-directory-p and ends up passed to file-name-directory, which just returns it unchanged under unix, because of the trailing slash. This is a mirror to the logic up-function that checks for wildcards (insert-directory-wildcard-in-dir-p, etc). I considered ways to pass down that information or recreate it, but I don't (yet?) have a better answer for what value it should have than "something safe" or "try to munge the wildcard into an existing directory", which seems terrible. Maybe the right answer is to not setq default-directory at all unless dirname is file-directory-p?