default-major-mode is processed in the c function 'set-buffer-major-mode' which is called by 'find-file-noselect' in files.el default-major-mode is also called in normal-mode, except when it is explicitly disabled by the find-file parameter which is passed in by after-find-file which is called by find-file-noselect. When the default-major-mode is called, none of the buffer local variables (like buffer-file-name, default-directory) have been set with an appropriate value. This usually isn't a problem, except when text-mode-hooks are running that want to look at the variables of the current buffer. For example: (defun flyspell-mode-check (&rest args) (if (flyspell-enable-p (buffer-file-name (current-buffer))) (flyspell-mode))) (add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'flyspell-mode-check) Basically, I want to turn on flyspell in all text mode files, except for certain kinds of text files like big log files or csv files. And I want the default mode to be text-mode. Unfortunately, the problem is that the code in files.el seems to be carefully designed to prevent this type of hook from working. It took me a couple of hours to understand what was going on. I think this is a flaw in the handling of default-major-mode. So, I think the code in files.el should be changed in the following way - change (normal-mode t) to (normal-mode nil) in after-find-file and change (set-buffer-major-mode buf) to (set-buffer-fundamental-mode buf) where (set-buffer-fundamental-mode buf) is equivalent to (let ((default-major-mode 'fundamental-mode)) (set-buffer-major-mode buf)) -jeff