Re: emacs without backup option

["Paul D. Smith" <pausmith@nortelnetworks.com>]

%% Robert.Land@t-online.de (robert_wilhelm_land) writes:

  rwl> Jay Ford wrote:
  >> 
  >> > > Does someone know which option is regarded to avoid emacs from
  >> > > imediately creating a backup file by opening a new or any other
  >> > > file?

Just a clarification: Emacs doesn't make a backup when you open a file,
new or otherwise.  It only (potentially) makes a backup when you _save_
the modified file.

  >> Put the following in ~/.emacs:
  >>
  >> (setq make-backup-files nil)  ; Never create backup files
  >>
  >> It works for me.

  rwl> Just tested it - exactly what I wanted. Thank you very much!
  rwl> Where did you get the synthax from and why does this setting
  rwl> require brackets?
               ^^^^^^^^
Parentheses.

This is Lisp.  The vast majority of Emacs programmed in Lisp; Emacs is
really a Lisp interpreter with a bunch of primitive functions
appropriate to an editor, written in C with Lisp bindings.  This is why
Emacs is called "extensible"; with a complete programming language you
can add huge amounts of functionality on top of the basic editor.
Consider, for example, the Gnus newsreader, VM mailer, etc.  These are
programmed entirely in Lisp; _no_ actual C code in Emacs was changed or
added for these packages to work.

Pretty impressive, IMO.  And, Lisp is cool.

However, if you're not into Lisp and just want to customize Emacs a
little, you probably should be using Emacs' "customize" feature to make
these changes to how Emacs behaves.  It's much simpler.

To use it, select the "Customize" submenu off of "Help".  If you just
want to look through all the thousands of things you can customize,
start at the top of an options menu with "Top-Level Customization Group".
"Browse Customization Groups" will give you a tree-like list of all the
groups you can customize.

If you know, as in this case, something about what you want to
customize, you can use "Apropos..." or, since this is an option,
"Apropos Options...".  Enter some keyword you want information apropos
of, such as "backup", and you'll get a list of all the options
associated with that.

In this case, I get 8 possibilities.  The second from the last is "Make
Backup Files", set to "on".  In Customize, you use mouse-2 to select
things, so click mouse-2 on the "[Toggle]" button to change it to "off".

Then, at the top of the buffer, click mouse-2 on the "[Save for Future
Sessions]" button.

Done.

Note that you can do _significant_ customizations; really, complete
overhauls, of Emacs functionality by writing Lisp, and it's not that
hard.  But, that's for later once you're a true Emacs junkie :).

Have fun!

-- 
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 Paul D. Smith <psmith@baynetworks.com>    HASMAT--HA Software Methods & Tools
 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
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   These are my opinions---Nortel Networks takes no responsibility for them.