Re: Turning on file-name-shadow-mode by default

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Has anyone else tried this patch yet?
>> I did.  It seems to work very well.
> Does it handle the "http://"; prefix correctly?

If the file syntax handles http:// specially (i.e. if you turn on
url-handler-mode), then yes, it works correctly.  It directly uses
substitute-in-file-name, so (modulo bugs) it should work 100% correctly in
the sense that the full text will always be interpreted identically to the
non-shadowed text.

Regarding FFAP, file-name-shadow-mode handles it incorrectly because
file-name-shadow-mode assumes that when minibuffer-completing-file-name is
non-nil, the minibuffer's content will eventually be passed to
substitute-in-file-name, which is not the case for FFAP.  The fact that FFAP
sets minibuffer-completing-file-name to non-nil even though it allows
entering a string which is not a proper file name (i.e. not understood by
file operations) could be considered a bug.  E.g. the patch below to
complete.el (which should be installed) would also cause problems with FFAP.


        Stefan


--- complete.el 20 aoû 2005 19:26:01 -0400      1.45
+++ complete.el 15 nov 2005 17:47:05 -0500      
@@ -339,10 +339,7 @@
 (defvar PC-delims-list nil)
 
 (defvar PC-completion-as-file-name-predicate
-  (function
-   (lambda ()
-     (memq minibuffer-completion-table
-          '(read-file-name-internal read-directory-name-internal))))
+  (lambda () minibuffer-completing-file-name)
    "A function testing whether a minibuffer completion now will work 
filename-style.
 The function takes no arguments, and typically looks at the value
 of `minibuffer-completion-table' and the minibuffer contents.")