Some programs need to write temporary files. Here is the usual way to construct a name for such a file:
(make-temp-file name-of-application)
The job of make-temp-file is to prevent two different users or
two different jobs from trying to use the exact same file name.
This function creates a temporary file and returns its name. Emacs
creates the temporary file’s name by adding to prefix some
random characters that are different in each Emacs job. The result is
guaranteed to be a newly created file, containing text if that’s
given as a string and empty otherwise. On MS-DOS, this function can
truncate prefix to fit into the 8+3 file-name limits. If
prefix is a relative file name, it is expanded against
temporary-file-directory.
(make-temp-file "foo")
⇒ "/tmp/foo232J6v"
When make-temp-file returns, the file has been created and is
empty. At that point, you should write the intended contents into the
file.
If dir-flag is non-nil, make-temp-file creates an
empty directory instead of an empty file. It returns the file name,
not the directory name, of that directory. See Directory Names.
If suffix is non-nil, make-temp-file adds it at
the end of the file name.
If text is a string, make-temp-file inserts it in the file.
To prevent conflicts among different libraries running in the same
Emacs, each Lisp program that uses make-temp-file should have its
own prefix. The number added to the end of prefix
distinguishes between the same application running in different Emacs
jobs. Additional added characters permit a large number of distinct
names even in one Emacs job.
The default directory for temporary files is controlled by the
variable temporary-file-directory. This variable gives the user
a uniform way to specify the directory for all temporary files. Some
programs use small-temporary-file-directory instead, if that is
non-nil. To use it, you should expand the prefix against
the proper directory before calling make-temp-file.
This variable specifies the directory name for creating temporary files.
Its value should be a directory name (see Directory Names), but it
is good for Lisp programs to cope if the value is a directory’s file
name instead. Using the value as the second argument to
expand-file-name is a good way to achieve that.
The default value is determined in a reasonable way for your operating
system; it is based on the TMPDIR, TMP and TEMP
environment variables, with a fall-back to a system-dependent name if
none of these variables is defined.
Even if you do not use make-temp-file to create the temporary
file, you should still use this variable to decide which directory to
put the file in. However, if you expect the file to be small, you
should use small-temporary-file-directory first if that is
non-nil.
This variable specifies the directory name for creating certain temporary files, which are likely to be small.
If you want to write a temporary file which is likely to be small, you should compute the directory like this:
(make-temp-file
(expand-file-name prefix
(or small-temporary-file-directory
temporary-file-directory)))
This function generates a string that might be a unique file
name. The name starts with base-name, and has several random
characters appended to it, which are different in each Emacs job. It
is like make-temp-file except that (i) it just constructs a
name and does not create a file, (ii) base-name should be an
absolute file name that is not magic, and (iii) if the returned file
name is magic, it might name an existing file. See Making Certain File Names “Magic”.
Warning: In most cases, you should not use this function; use
make-temp-file instead! This function is susceptible to a race
condition, between the make-temp-name call and the creation of
the file, which in some cases may cause a security hole.
Sometimes, it is necessary to create a temporary file on a remote host or a mounted directory. The following two functions support this.
This function is similar to make-temp-file, but it creates a
temporary file as close as possible to default-directory. If
prefix is a relative file name, and default-directory is
a remote file name or located on a mounted file systems, the temporary
file is created in the directory returned by the function
temporary-file-directory. Otherwise, the function
make-temp-file is used. prefix, dir-flag and
suffix have the same meaning as in make-temp-file.
(let ((default-directory "/ssh:remotehost:"))
(make-nearby-temp-file "foo"))
⇒ "/ssh:remotehost:/tmp/foo232J6v"
The directory for writing temporary files via
make-nearby-temp-file. In case of a remote
default-directory, this is a directory for temporary files on
that remote host. If such a directory does not exist, or
default-directory ought to be located on a mounted file system
(see mounted-file-systems), the function returns
default-directory. For a non-remote and non-mounted
default-directory, the value of the variable
temporary-file-directory is returned.
In order to extract the local part of the file’s name of a temporary
file, use file-local-name (see Making Certain File Names “Magic”).