Re: creating backups in temporary directories

[Stefan Monnier]

> Really?  I've just tried this (with a symlink in ~/tmp instead of
> /tmp), and Emacs removed the symlink for the backup before saving the
> file.  Are there circumstances where it might not do this?

IIUC this depends on backup-by-copying.  If backup-by-copying is nil, then
the problem is indeed not present, but you get another one insted: right
after Emacs moves /tmp/foo to /tmp/foo~ another user can add a symlink
/tmp/foo that points to an interesting place and then when Emacs
subsequently writes the new /tmp/foo it gets written to the location chosen
by the attacker.


        Stefan