Coddling Emacs

[Pekka Pessi]

In message <mailman.991117663.3722.python-list at python.org> Laura Creighton <lac at cd.chalmers.se> writes:
>Emacs <kick> keeps making wretched FILES all over my system.  I know
>all about auto-save-default and make-backup-files now and I have made
>emacs politely keep its backups out of the current directory
>(this is not v6 unix. We don't crash all the time here.  We do,
>however, run out of disk space.)  What I can't figure out is how to
>make emacs stop making symbolic links  like this:
>lrwxrwxrwx    1 lac      lac            44 May 29 08:19 .#CapsBasicWidgets.pyc
> -> lac at ratthing-b246.strakt.com.24677:990877909

>every time I modify a file and then go visit a different file without
>writing out the changes.  This made my package loader very ill.
>Changing my package loader was faster (and easier) than figuring out emacs,
>but now I am mortally offended.  Does anybody know what emacs calls these 
>things internally so I can find out how to tell emacs to do it someplace else?

        Nope. But you can keep backup files somewhere else:

(setq
 auto-save-directory (expand-file-name "~/.backup/") 
 delete-auto-save-files t
 auto-save-default t
 auto-save-hash-p (equal system-type 'windows-nt))

        Setting auto-save-hash-p to 'emacs-me-gently-with-a-chainsaw can
        help your package loader, too.

                                                Pekka