Re: Emacs syntax for filenames to mean "absolute location on the current remote host"?

[Jim Porter]

On 9/1/2023 11:13 AM, Michael Albinus wrote:
> Jim Porter <jporterbugs@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > But the Emacs manual says:
> >
> > > ‘/:’ can also prevent ‘~’ from being treated as a special character
> >    for a user’s home directory.
> >
> > So according to that rule, "/:~" would mean "the file named tilde in
> > the current directory".
>
> Hmm, I've never stumbled over this sentence in the manual. And it is a
> little bit vague: "can also prevent".
>
> A short test shows that it doesn't if the tilde comes directly after the 
> quoting:
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> M-x cd RET /net RET
> M-x pwd
>    => /net
> M-x cd RET /:~ RET
> M-x pwd
>    => /home/albinus
>
> M-x cd RET /:~user RET
> M-x pwd
>    => /home/user
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
> It even works for remote file names (although there are still some quirks):
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> C-x C-f /ssh:ford:/:~ RET
>    => dired buffer of remote user's home directory
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
> What doesn't work are file names like "/:/tmp/~hack", as said in the manual.

Huh. I never realized it worked that way (though I never actually 
*tried* this case).

I think the first thing I'll do then is to try and understand *exactly* 
how quoted file names work, and then update the manual to clarify this. 
Once I know exactly how they work, it should be easier to be sure that I 
won't mess anything up with these Eshell improvements.