Re: Info-insert-dir

[Richard Stallman]

    Probably.  It's a customizable variable and `wid-edit' doesn't even
    check if the user puts valid directory names in there.

It shouldn't check that.  We do not try to stop users from putting
nonexistent directory names into Lisp variables.

           (unless (file-exists-p default-directory)
            (setq default-directory (expand-file-name "~/")))

    AFAICT this is the only occurrence of such a test in the entire Emacs
    sources.  It might fail if default-directory equals the name of an
    existing non-directory file - an unlikely case, though.

Perhaps it should verify that this is an existing directory.

      But isn't it
    a bit tedious to search for all occurrences of `call-process' etc?
    Couldn't such a check make it to `call-process', `start-process' ...

It would be incorrect to change call-process to change the default
directory on its own.  Often the execution of a command depends on the
current directory, so that if the current directory is nonexistent, an
error is the right thing.


We could make a subroutine which does this and calls call-process.