Re: A few questions about desktop.el

[Richard Stallman]

    Two things are done: first, a desktop file is modified when it is read
    (without incident) to include a "in use" tag; further Emacses will
    complain about this if they see it, and will leave the desktop file
    unloaded unless the user accepts the collision risk.

I think it is somewhat dangerous to modify the file when reading it.
My experience tells me that that can lead to various problems in weird
cases, and it is much better if operations that only look at data
are written so that they do not change anything.

Can you use a different file name for the "in use" marker?