Latest CVS: echo -n foo > foo In xemacs: C-x C-f foo I get: Invalid constant: Unrecognized eol type, autodetect Works fine if foo has more than one line: echo -e "foo\nfoo\c" > foo I discovered this because I have some lisp that was saving a list to a file with a simple (format "%S" list). Easy enough to fix. Hassle was that I was loading this file as part of my init, so it took entirely too long to figure out what the real problem was. So, at a minimum, can the error message provide some idea as to what file was being loaded? Incidentally, compiling with --with-default-eol-detection results in a temacs that SEGVs during the loading of the first lisp file (update-elcs I think). Personally, I'd be happiest if I could just turn all this stuff off... -g