Subject: RE: bug#4654: 23.1; Elisp manual doc of abbreviate-file-name

From: "Drew Adams" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 08:19:06 -0700

> I hope no one is seriously suggesting to change the behavior of one of
> the oldest Emacs APIs...

That's what I suggested, raising arguments in favor.
But I did also raise the countervailing weight of legacy.

In terms of code, it is likely to be simpler to be able to always depend on `~',
rather than sometimes `C:\\', sometimes `F:\\' (etc.), and sometimes `/'. But
yes, it might require some code adaptation, if existing code depends on the
current inconsistency.

> I fixed the manual.  The description now says
> 
> (If the home directory is a root directory, it is not
> replaced with @samp{~}, because this does not make the result
> shorter on many systems.)
> 
> I hope this is something everybody can live with.

Thank you.

Consider also making clearer the direction of substitution (e.g a one-line
example). As Stefan's own misstatement shows, it's easy for readers to
understand the substitution backwards.