Emacs bug with `[' in filenames

[Ehud Karni]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il> suggested at Nov 11, 2000:
> This should be posted to gnu.emacs.bug.  I think it also deserves to
> be mentioned in the manual.

On Fri, 10 Nov 2000 11:09:59 -0800, Todd Wells <toddw@wrq.com> wrote:
> 
> I attempted to open a file named "viewSessionUpdate[1].txt" with Emacs on
> the Windows NT platform -- using C-x F it did a successful tab-completion of
> the filename, but when I hit Enter it said "No files match
> `k:/AppConnTester/viewSessionUpdate[1].txt'"

The problem exist in UNIX too. I created a file named "abc[x]" and
checked `find-file' (C-x C-f) on it in various ways. Trying to find
it in the exact name quoted in different ways (i.e abc[x], abc\[x\[,
abc\\[x\\], "abc[x]") does not work. Finding it with wildcards (i.e.
abc*, abc?x?) DOES work.

The problem is that when called interactively `find-file' always call
`find-file-noselect' with wildcards set to non nil, and this cause
`find-file-noselect' to try to match "abc[x]" which fails (because
I don't have a file name `abcx'). I patched the `find-file' function
so if I call it by: C-u C-x C-f it sets wildcards to nil and then it
finds `abc[x]'. The patch is the 4 following lines:

  (and wildcards
      (numberp wildcards)
      (/= wildcards 1)
      (setq wildcards nil))

Another way to bypass this problem is to visit the file from `dired'
(which also calls `find-file' but always with wildcards turned off).

Ehud.


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