Re: [h-e-w] I found a way to list the c:/ directory

[Dr Francis J. Wright]

From: "Chris McMahan" <address@hidden>
To: "NTEmacs" <address@hidden>
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 10:52 PM
Subject: [h-e-w] I found a way to list the c:/ directory


> For some time I've had an issue with dired and c:/ directory.
>
> Whenever I use an external ls program the c:/ directory would bug out
> because the cygwin ls program inserted the following error message in
> the directory listing
>
> ls: c:/pagefile.sys: No such file or directory
>
> which caused dired to choke.

I think that's a bug in Cygwin ls, and I thought it was fixed a long time
ago, but I see it's still there.  I'm pretty sure I wrote some ELisp to hack
around it a long time ago, but now I can't find it.  I probably threw it
away because I thought the bug was fixed.  Essentially, you need to advise
insert-directory to delete the offending error line before ls has output it
but before dired sees it.

> So in order to view the c:/ directory, I've been forced to use
> ls-lisp. It's an excellent program, and I like the feature that places
> the directories first, but it has always listed the file attributes
> incorrectly.

I would also be interested to know exactly what you mean by that.  There is
a fundamental mismatch between file attributes in the Unix and Windows
worlds, so any attempt to give a Unix-like display of Windows file
attributes has to invent some information.  Different programs will probably
do that differently, which doesn't really qualify as a bug.  The way that
Cygwin ls invents missing information (such as group ownership) seems to
change over time (i.e. between updates).  But if ls-lisp misreports any
meaningful information then of course it is a bug.  Also, make sure that you
are comparing ls-lisp and ls output with the same options set.

Francis