Hidden symlinks, sshfs, and svn

[Tavian Barnes]

I've noticed that emacs creates hidden symlinks when unsaved files are
left open long enough (regardless of auto-save-mode) named something
like '.#<filename>' and pointing to something like
'<username>@<host>.<domain>.<PID of emacs>:<some long number>'.  They
generally go away if you save the file, or if you close emacs, so I've
never had a problem with them, until now.  The problem I'm having is:
sshfs, with '-o follow_symlinks', is confused by these links, since
they don't point anywhere reasonable.  As such, they cannot be deleted
by 'rm' on the client, so I have to use ssh to get rid of them.  I
can't just ignore them, because svn crashes with "svn: Can't read
directory 'dirname': Partial results are valid but processing is
incomplete." upon encountering a directory with these links.

So:

- From an informative standpoint, what purpose do these links have?
- How can I tell emacs not to create them?  Or, is there a better way
to deal with this problem?

-- 
Tavian Barnes