DIRECTORY applied to symbolic links with non-existent targets returns errors (was Re: [armedbear-devel] undesirable behavior in #'directory ?)

[Mark Evenson]

On Jan 6, 2014, at 17:30, Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

Agreed that “failure is not an option”, at least without a correctable restart.  

I’m a little confused about how to fix this, but in to guide my thinking I have filed the issue as [ticket][#340] in the meantime.

[#340]: http://abcl.org/trac/ticket/340
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