Re: Is this comment in my .emacs correct?

[Kevin Rodgers]

William Payne wrote:
> From my .emacs-file:
>
> (setq auto-mode-alist
>       (append
>        (list
> ; Must use Makefile$ and not just Makefile or you will get makefile mode for
> any
> ; type of file in a directory with the string makefile in it
>         '("\\Makefile$" . makefile-mode)         )
>        auto-mode-alist
>        )
>       )
>
> Is the comment correct?

Almost.  You do need to anchor the "Makefile" string, because the
auto-mode-alist entries are matched against the entire file name
(`C-h v buffer-file-name' for an example).  But "$" is not the best
anchor, because it can also match a newline in the path; that's an
admittedly unusual case, but it'd be better and consistent with the
other entries if you used "\\'".  Also, you might want to anchor the
beginning of the file name; but the default entries don't provide much
guidance since there are examples with no anchor, some with just "/",
and some with "\\(/\\|\\`\\)".

(setq auto-mode-alist
      (cons '("\\(\\`\\|/\\)Makefile\\'" . makefile-mode)
            auto-mode-alist))

--
Kevin Rodgers