gnu emacs backup files
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I use [GNU
Emacs](http://gnu.org/software/emacs/), and I love it. However, one annoyance is
that it scatters autosave files (_#foo#_) and backup files (_foo~_) all over the
filesystem.

So, I finally got fed up with this, and figured out how to keep them all in one
place. Here's the
[elisp](http://gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-lisp-intro/html_node/index.html)
(GNU Emacs only) that I put in [my
.emacs](http://ryan.barrett.name/dotfiles/emacs):

    ;; Put autosave files (ie #foo#) in one place, *not*
    ;; scattered all over the file system!
    (defvar autosave-dir
     (concat "/tmp/emacs\_autosaves/" (user-login-name) "/"))

    (make-directory autosave-dir t)

    (defun auto-save-file-name-p (filename)
      (string-match "^#.*#$" (file-name-nondirectory filename)))

    (defun make-auto-save-file-name ()
      (concat autosave-dir
       (if buffer-file-name
          (concat "#" (file-name-nondirectory buffer-file-name) "#")
        (expand-file-name
         (concat "#%" (buffer-name) "#")))))

    ;; Put backup files (ie foo~) in one place too. (The backup-directory-alist
    ;; list contains regexp=>directory mappings; filenames matching a regexp are
    ;; backed up in the corresponding directory. Emacs will mkdir it if necessary.)
    (defvar backup-dir (concat "/tmp/emacs\_backups/" (user-login-name) "/"))
    (setq backup-directory-alist (list (cons "." backup-dir)))

...and, courtesy of [Amit Patel](http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/),
here's the elisp for XEmacs.

    ;;; Auto-save
    ;;; Load the auto-save.el package, which lets you put all of your autosave
    ;;; files in one place, instead of scattering them around the file system.
    ;;; M-x recover-all-files or M-x recover-file to get them back
    (defvar temp-directory (concat "/tmp/" (user-login-name)))
    (make-directory temp-directory t)

    ; One of the main issues for me is that my home directory is
    ; NFS mounted.  By setting all the autosave directories in /tmp,
    ; things run much quicker
    (setq auto-save-directory (concat temp-directory "/autosave")
          auto-save-hash-directory (concat temp-directory "/autosave-hash")
          auto-save-directory-fallback "/tmp/"
          auto-save-list-file-prefix (concat temp-directory "/autosave-")
          auto-save-hash-p nil
          auto-save-timeout 100
          auto-save-interval 300)
    (make-directory auto-save-directory t)
    (require 'auto-save)

    ;;; Put backups in another directory.  With the directory-info
    ;;; variable, you can control which files get backed up where.
    (require 'backup-dir)
    (setq bkup-backup-directory-info
          \`(
            (t ,(concat temp-directory "/backups") ok-create full-path)
            ))
    (setq make-backup-files t)
    (setq backup-by-copying t)
    (setq backup-by-copying-when-mismatch t)
    (setq backup-by-copying-when-linked t)
    (setq version-control t)
    (setq-default delete-old-versions t)