> Emacs mail readers don't evaluate local variables when they read in a > folder, because they are not visiting the file proper; they are reading in > formatted data (i.e. messages) from a file. It doesn't make sense to > evaluate variables that are part of a message. > > It's possible that very old versions of VM didn't protect against > this, but it was fixed a long time ago; at any rate, VM 5.72 (the current > version) is safe. Rmail never had the problem. > > In general, if you are paranoid about setting buffer-local variables when > you visit arbitrary files, you can put the following in your .emacs: > > ;; for emacs 19 > (setq enable-local-eval nil) > (setq enable-local-variables nil) > ;; for emacs 18 > (setq inhibit-local-variables t) > > > Too bad some people are so paranoid about security that they happily > sacrifice useful functionality. After all, every other user on the system > is clearly out to get them using any available opportunity... Two questions: 1) Where is this documented? I have found nothing in the emacs 18 info files. 2) Where is it useful? MikeB