GNU bug report logs - #79252
Option 'file-precious-flag' creates unrelatable/untrackable temporary filenames

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From: "R. Diez" <rdiez-2006 <at> rd10.de>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 79252 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#79252: Option 'file-precious-flag' creates unrelatable/untrackable temporary filenames
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2025 20:53:04 +0200

> Sorry, I don't understand the issue.  Perhaps some details are missing.

OK, I'll try to explain it with more details.

A number of years ago, I enabled option 'file-precious-flag' after getting file corruption when editing remote files with Tramp over unstable network connections. When you enable 'file-precious-flag', you never actually see the temporary filenames being generated, because they are short lived. If everything works well, those files quickly disappear anyway.

After enabling 'file-precious-flag', I just noticed that my file corruption problems went away. I quickly forgot the implementation trick with the temporary file. Whenever the editing session failed, I got a network error, which was expected in my environment. So I just tried later, when the link was up again.

I didn't think at the time that Emacs might be leaving temporary files behind when the network link failed. The reason is, I normally do not look at the directories, because I keep the complicated Tramp paths in a text file, so I just copy-and-paste them to re-open the remote files directly. An example of such a Tramp filename is:

/ssh:username <at> my-hostname|sudo:root <at> my-hostname:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml

Every now and then, I did spot a files named like "tmp1eghjG" here and there, but at a much later time, and I didn't think much of it. The config files I edit are small, and in the rare occasion I did look at the file, it was 0 bytes long anyway.

These aren't my systems and I do not edit their config files often, so even if I had investigated further and the temporary files hadn't been empty, I would have probably blamed them on some pesky sysadmin using a lesser editor like Vim, or even worse, some editor written in JavaScript. }8-)

Fast forward a few years. I have recently started to hit the Tramp issue I described, and this time I did look around, so that's how I figured out that those temporary files were actually my doing. It never occurred to me that the core Emacs wouldn't go out of its way to make my life super easy, how would I??? So naturally, the first thing I tried was to blame Tramp, but its developers were smart enough to generate temporary filenames with a recognisable prefix.

Now that I know, and after the time I invested, I will forever remember. I just thought I shouldn't let the next Emacs user, or some unrelated sysadmin, unnecessarily scratch their heads when the next network hitch or software bug unduly leaves such a temporary file behind, or when such a file comes up in an strace log. If the temporary file had been named "prometheus.yml.Emacs-tmp1eghjG", I would have known straight away where it came from.

Best regards,
  rdiez

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