Subject: Re: bug#34338: 26.1; delete-file return codes and failures

From: Boruch Baum <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2019 04:35:05 -0500

On 2019-02-06 09:24, Michael Albinus wrote:
> Boruch Baum <[email-masked]> writes:
> > I'd like to suggest:
> >
> >   delete-file FILE &optional NOERROR FORCE
>
> At the very least, keep existing arguments. So it would be
>
> delete-file FILE &optional THRASH NOERROR FORCE

Off-topic, but potentially worthy of consideration: For a second, I
didn't realize that 'thrash' might be a typo, and I got excited, because
it made it seem that there existed a hidden feature that I would love
for delete-file to have: some sort of 'thrashing' the file before
un-linking / de-allocating, aka. a secure delete similar to the linux
core-util 'shred'. As background, I noticed this behavior of
'delete-file' when proposing a feature for emacs-w3m to securely scrub a
user's internet browsing history. There[1], I'm currently just calling
'shred' or some other external program of the user's choice.

> Your other proposals look OK to me. It might be worth to say, that FORCE
> could fail for some Tramp backends (but I haven't checked in detail yet).
>
> Best regards, Michael.

Always happy to try to be of help.

[1] https://github.com/emacs-w3m/emacs-w3m/pull/2

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