[Tutor] Dumb question on emacs and python ...

[Neal McBurnett]

The "*" is a special character used differently in different contexts.
To the shell, it is a wildcard, matching anything.
In a listing of files (by, e.g. ls), it sometimes is appended to
simply indicate that the file is executable.

If you're just starting to learn emacs, (or any other editor) I would
just suggest it can take a while to pick up some of the quirks.  I
personally absolutely love emacs and the great power it provides for
working on many many types of files.  But it does have a learning
curve.

You may have a file that is actually named 
    fgrepwc_allcnt.py*
which can add a lot of problems and confusion as has been
noted.

running
      mv 'fgrepwc_allcnt.py*' fgrepwc_allcnt.py
will change the name after which you can open it up fresh in emacs.
Note the quotes - they cause the * to be treated as a real character.

Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
Signed and/or sealed mail encouraged.  GPG/PGP Keyid: 2C9EBA60

On Sat, Dec 27, 2003 at 02:01:47PM -0500, hcohen2 wrote:
> Marilyn Davis wrote:
> >On Sat, 27 Dec 2003, hcohen2 wrote:
> >>Marilyn,
> >>Just added a few more characters to the file name: was fgrepwc.py* to 
> >>fgrepwc_allcnt.py*.
> >
> >Well, that '*' at the end messes you up.  Try subtracting that and
> >maybe emacs will behave for you.
>
> That's what I thought too, but (repeated it again) openning the file 
> without the '*' yields an empty file.  It looks crazy to me too.
> 
> I guess I am just going to write the file by pasting lines, or typing it 
> in new.  The change in appearance and the failure to execute are too 
> strong hints to ignore.
> 
> Thanks for your help.
> Herschel