On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 12:36 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote: >> Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2017 20:20:38 -0800 (PST) >> From: Drew Adams >> Cc: 29465@debbugs.gnu.org, Tino Calancha >> >> IF we feel it helps a user to prompt about something, >> and IF we feel there is a possibility that some users >> might not understand the prompt, in spite of our best >> efforts to come up with a good prompt, and IF we feel >> that understanding the prompt is important, THEN the >> doc string should make clear whatever it is that it >> is important that users understand about that prompting. >> >> It's quite possible for a user not to understand even >> a good prompt. S?he should be able to get the point >> by doing `C-h f', in that case. > > The doc string already attempts to do that: > > `*' and `?' when not surrounded by whitespace nor `\\=`' have no special > significance for `dired-do-shell-command', and are passed through > normally to the shell, but you must confirm first. > > We could make the intent of the confirmation even more clear, e.g. > > `*' and `?' when not surrounded by whitespace nor `\\=`' have no special > significance for `dired-do-shell-command', and are passed through > normally to the shell, but you must confirm first, to avoid > inadvertently passing a wildcard to a shell command, which would cause > that command to act on more files than you intended. > > Is anything else needed to make this prompt's intent more clear? I made some small changes to the docstring and I added an option for disabling the prompt, in two separate patches against master. I have attached the patches. Since I don't have a good idea for the prompt text itself, I fixed these two issues first. Aside: is there a recommended way of formatting and sending patches? What's easiest for me is using git format-patch and then attaching the files, but I don't know if Emacs maintainers prefer anything specific (e.g. mail readers that don't support MIME attachments?)