On Wed 11 Nov, I wrote:
> On Tue 10 Nov, Stephen B Streater wrote:
> > I had a crash on my CATs machine yesterday which corrupted a couple
> > of files, one of which now has the directory entry of a device which
> > doesn't allow rm or chmod. Is there an easy way to remove the file?
> > (fsck doesn't think there's anything wrong with it.)
> 
> Have you tried the directory editing mode of emacs?
> 
  [method snipped]
> 
> I'm not sure, but it may be necessary to run fsck to clean up
> afterwards - I would do so anyway.

I have since been told that my suggestion was "extremely naive" and
made to feel very stupid for posting this to the list. I have clearly
completely misunderstood something fundamental, so I hope you will all
be tollerant of my ignorance and help me towards having a clue.

I have been reading my way through the O'Reilly Essential System
Administration book and from what it says about the emacs directory
editing mode on page 81, I was lead to believe that emacs was
performing some sort of direct manipulation of the directory rather
than just providing a pretty way to view an ls listing (which would
seem like a rather pointless feature to add to an editor). This is why
I felt it would be important to run fsck to tidy up the inodes which
no longer existed in any directories after emacs had removed them. Of
course it is always possible that the directory editing mode not only
removes the file entry from the directory, but also marks the
corresponding inode as unused.

Does anyone know for sure whether emacs works like this, or whether
I am in fact the completely ignorant fool that I am accused of being?

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