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#203 Rename DEADJOE to something less obtrusive
Howdy --
I love joe and to the chagrin of my VI and Emacs using coworkers, I don't really want to change. However, when a DEADJOE file is created after an interrupted editing session, this file can cause problems. In special directories that expect everything it in not named with a dot before it or a tilde after it to be a useful file (e.g. cron directories, apache configuration directories). The file DEADJOE should probably be renamed to .DEADJOE to avoid causing this problem.
-jag
DEADJOE is written to the directory from which joe was called. So, if you need to ensure that no DEADJOE appears in /path/to/dir, simply call "joe /path/to/dir/filename" from a directory where a DEADJOE file would not be obtrusive.
As to what the "best name" for such a file would be, I'm not really sure. I sometimes use joe on very large (several GB) files, and when that instance of joe dies, the DEADJOE file is huge...and because a given directory's DEADJOE file is where every joe death is written, sometimes this file gets VERY big indeed. From that perspective, I'd like DEADJOE to be as obvious as possible so I remember to rm it. :)
I have to agree, prefixing it with a dot would make it invisible to most ls invocations. That's especially bad when you have to work with old files that have not been touched in a long while, and DEADJOE can give hints as to what the last thoughts of the developer were before he died on the project ;-)
It would probably make the most sense if DEADJOE got the ~ (tilde) suffix. That would probably make it match most blacklists for editor-generated backup files.
There is -backpath option for backup files and I suggest a similar option for deadjoe files, like DEADJOE.1, DEADJOE.2... Also i think that temporary edit buffers for opening files should not cause DEADJOE files. Only content from main editor windows should be rescued.