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

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2019 11:55:15 +0200

> Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2019 05:34:23 -0400
> From: Boruch Baum <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
> 
> On 2019-10-31 16:32, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > The current implementation basically is a moral equivalent of "rm -f".
> > It also is biased towards interactive usage, where the return value is
> > not very important.
> >
> > Does it answer your question?
> 
> Not satisfactorily.

Actually, from what you wrote, it follows that it did answer your
question, you just disagree that delete-file should have been coded to
work as it does.

Please note that I didn't try to justify its behavior, only to explain
its rationale, in response to your question "If it didn't matter, why
waste your time attempting the deletion?"  IOW, there certainly _are_
valid use cases where "it doesn't matter", and the fact that "rm -f"
exists is an evidence.