Colon confuses emacs: Emacs thinks colon is another host..

[Deepak Goel]

Emacs remote-editing facility using a colon is nice and powerful. 

The problem is that there seems to be no way for emacs to access a
*local* directory-name if the name happens to end in a colon.

To see what i am saying, go to the / of your unix/linux filesystem and
do a "mkdir tmp:"..  A directory called tmp: is duly created. Now drop
some file into it.   Now there seems to be no way for emacs to list
the contents of the tmp: directory. 

Try C-x d /tmp:/ and it asks you for passwords. :(

One would think that backslashing would make emacs interpret the :
literellay but that doesn't work.. understandably so, because \ is
used in windows..

Okay, so we give up on trying to specify a valid name ourselves.. and
we let emacs do it..  We do a C-x d on / and list its contents.. then
we go to tmp:/ and hit RET..  this time emacs should know what it is
doing right?  Because it itself listed tmp: as tmp:/... But no, it
again starts asking for for a password..

My suggestion: 
i think there's an easy win-win option..   IF the colon is doubled,
then emacs should interpret it literally.. Thus, to view the
contents, one should do C-x d /tmp:: and emacs should not ask you for
passwords.




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In GNU Emacs 21.1.2 (sparc-sun-solaris2.6, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars)
 of 2001-10-30 on ratbert.eng.umd.edu
configured using `configure  --prefix=/usr/local/gnu 
--infodir=/usr/local/gnu/info/emacs-21.1 --with-kerberos --with-x 
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