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From: skip@skipnyc.UUCP (Skip Gilbrech)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: do-auto-save bug/feature
Message-ID: <357@skipnyc.UUCP>
Date: 20 Feb 89 04:10:31 GMT
References: <50852@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Reply-To: skip@skipnyc.UUCP (Skip Gilbrech)
Organization: PaineWebber, New York City
Lines: 46

In article <50852@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> Ram-Ashwin@cs.yale.edu (Ashwin Ram) writes:
>GNU Emacs 18.52.26 of Wed Feb 15 1989 on leo.ring.cs.yale.edu (Domain/OS)
>
>Sometimes while auto-saving, I see the following message:
>
>    Buffer <...> has shrunk a lot; not autosaving it
>
>I consider this a bug since I would like my files to be auto-saved regardless
>of whether Emacs thinks I have deleted too much stuff from them.  As long as
>auto-save-mode is on, I consider the file valuable enough to be auto-saved.
>
>Regardless of whether this is a bug or a feature, however, how do I turn it
>off?

You have to patch the source to shut this off.  I got so annoyed with this
'feature' that I did so a couple of weeks ago (this patch is for fileio.c
from GNU Emacs 18.52):

*** fileio.c~	Sat Aug 20 12:14:24 1988
--- fileio.c	Sun Feb 19 22:48:03 1989
***************
*** 1922,1927 ****
--- 1922,1931 ----
  	  && b->save_modified < b->text.modified
  	  && b->auto_save_modified < b->text.modified)
  	{
+ #if 0
+ 	    /* sg - it's a stupid assumption that the contents of a
+ 	     * shrunken file aren't worth saving...
+ 	     */
  	  if ((XFASTINT (b->save_length) * 10
  	       > (b->text.size1 + b->text.size2) * 13)
  	      /* These messages are frequent and annoying for `*mail*'.  */
***************
*** 1933,1938 ****
--- 1937,1943 ----
  	      Fsleep_for (make_number (1));
  	      continue;
  	    }
+ #endif	/* 0 */
  	  SetBfp (b);
  	  if (!auto_saved && NULL (nomsg))
  	    message1 ("Auto-saving...");
-- 
Skip Gilbrech                           UUCP: uunet!pwcmrd!skip
PaineWebber, NYC                              attmail!skipnyc!skip