GNU bug report logs - #23276
25.0.92; Crash in auto-revert when file no longer present

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From: John Mastro <john.b.mastro <at> gmail.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: John Wiegley <jwiegley <at> gmail.com>, michael.albinus <at> gmx.de, andlind <at> gmail.com, 23276 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#23276: 25.0.92; Crash in auto-revert when file no longer present
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2016 19:57:12 -0700

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> wrote:
>> I would not want it to erase the buffer. Countless have been the times that
>> I've been working on a project, and an unbridled rm took away code from the
>> disk which I was very grateful to find was still in a buffer.
>
> How is it different from clobbering a file by making it empty?
>
> Don't we have a variant of auto-revert that never shrinks the buffer?

Speaking purely as a user, I think a case can be made that it really is
different. We could say:

    If the file exists, auto-revert updates the buffer based on its
    (possibly empty) contents. If the file no longer exists, then there
    is nothing for auto-revert to do, so it does not modify the buffer.

However, Michael mentioned in a previous message that the buffer would
also be left non-empty if the file existed but was empty:

Michael Albinus <michael.albinus <at> gmx.de> writes:
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:
>> Would we keep the buffer non-empty if the file existed but was empty?
>
> Yes.

That seems less conceptually clear to me, though I can imagine
cases where it would be more convenient.

-- 
                John

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