Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!husc6!psuvax1!schwartz
From: schwartz@psuvax1.psu.edu (Scott E. Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: default-directory -- what and why??
Message-ID: <3274@psuvax1.psu.edu>
Date: 10 Feb 88 03:57:52 GMT
Reply-To: schwartz@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Scott E. Schwartz)
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 15


[In the matter of GNU emacs 18.47]

If one has an info file in a particular directory, what is the
preferred means of reading it?  After much effort I conclude that the
only thing to do is something like "g(~/x/y/z/w)Top", that is to say
supply an absolute pathname or a tilde relative pathname.  Is there any
reason that "g(./w)Top" shouldn't work, other than that that's the way
it is?  Shouldn't "." have paramount meaning rather than be ignored by
expand-file-name or whatever lisp beastie that is responsible for this?

Similarly, if you are in a directory /a/b/ where you have execute
but not read permission on /a, emacs will not be able to read any files
in /a/b since it demands on expanding "." into "/a/b/".  I think this is
a design flaw....  Am I wrong?