Subject: bug#23350: 25.0.93; Docstring of bookmark-save-flag wrongly says that bookmark-default-file defaults do ~/.emacs.bmk

From: John Mastro <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 14:32:38 -0700

Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto <[email-masked]> wrote:
> bookmark-default-file is defined in bookmark.el as follows:
>     (defcustom bookmark-default-file
>       (if bookmark-file
>           ;; In case user set `bookmark-file' in her .emacs:
>           bookmark-file
>         (locate-user-emacs-file "bookmarks" ".emacs.bmk"))
>       "File in which to save bookmarks by default."
>       :type 'file
>       :group 'bookmark)
>
> Therefore, ".emacs.bmk" is not the default.  Because of the semantics of
> locate-user-emacs-file, the default is equivalent to
> (concat user-emacs-directory "bookmarks")

My reading of the docstring and code is that it's working as intended.
It's not that .emacs.bmk is the default, but that it was the default in
the past.

The logic seems to be (assuming ~/.emacs.d/ is the user's Emacs
directory):
  1. If `bookmark-file' is non-nil, use that
  2. If ~/.emacs.d/bookmarks exists, use that
  3. If ~/.emacs.d/.emacs.bmk exists, use that
  4. Otherwise, use ~/.emacs.d/bookmarks

Note that ~/.emacs.d/bookmarks is used in both 2 and 4.

In other words, ~/.emacs.d/bookmarks is the real default, but it's
accommodating the continued use of the old default
(~/.emacs.d/.emacs.bmk).

-- 
        John