Re: non-interactive shell

[B. T. Raven]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:27:04 -0600
> > From: "B. T. Raven" <nihil@nihilo.net>
> >
> > Apparently it's not possible to make a new directory with:
> >
> >   (shell-command (concat "md " path))
> >
> > where path is some string like
> >
> > "\\a\\b\\c"
>
> It works for me.  What happened on your machine, and which version of
> Emacs did you use?

w32 22.1 but I was having trouble with knowing when Emacs would 
translate / into \ when needed. After studying directory-file-name and 
file-directory-name and some other functions new to me, I did get it to 
work.

> > Is it possible at all to make a directory under the default-directory 
> > with elisp and using a variable rather than a literal string.
>
> Of course, it is.  But I'd suggest to use Emacs primitives instead of
> an external command:
>
>   (make-directory path t)

That one is new to me too. I'll use it but if I add parents arg I will 
have to learn how to handle the "Cancel" error. I could have found it 
with C-h a but I didn't think the function I needed would be among the 
commands. Is there a way to do apropos with C-h f ?
Anyway since I have cygwin df on this w2000 machine and I recently 
learned here about file-system-info on the "Dired hd drives list" thread 
I was trying to write a quick and dirty "Sneakernet" and backup program, 
polysave ["Save current buffer to other filesystems (i.e. flash drives, 
cd's, dvds, floppy) if they are mounted and with same relative path."]

Thanks, Eli; it (sort of) works now, for what it's worth.