[armedbear-devel] undesirable behavior in #'directory ?

[Alan Ruttenberg]

Emacs creates files like this:
lrwxr-xr-x   1 alanr  staff     30 Jan  6 01:40 .#foo.sql@ ->
alanr at conjunctive-2.local.6427

as lock files, IIRC.

In such cases, the target of link names a file that doesn't exist.
#'directory calls #'truename on the filenames that are listed, and
truename does a probe file. Incidentally It looks like that is done in
the java as well as the lisp function making the latter redundant.

It seems wrong that there is a situation in which one can't call
directory at all without getting an error.

The crux of the matter is how to interpret the documentation of
truename in the presence of symbolic links.  The doc for truename
says:  If filespec is a pathname it represents the name used to open
the file. This may be, but is not required to be, the actual name of
the file."

"actual name of the file" suggests that there is a file, but also
suggests that it is the name that is important. Also whereas directory
allows implementation-dependent keywords, truename is not so defined.

I'll take the position that truename should *not* depend on the file
existing, but rather focus on what names are present in directory
structures. So resolve-truenames nil should should return the names in
the directory and for resolve-truenames t it should follow symbolic
links as long as they can be followed without hitting a name that
doesn't designate an existing file.

-Alan