[ILUG] emacs and saving files as root

[P at draigBrady.com]

Niall O Broin wrote:
> I've just observed that on certain boxes I have (at least SuSE 9.3, SuSE 8.1 
> and Ubuntu Hoary with xemacs) (x)emacs saving files as root causes those 
> files to be owned by root.
> 
> However, on assorted Red Hat boxes wiyh emacs and xemacs, on OS-X with emacs, 
> saving files as root causes those files to be owned by their original owner, 
> whatever that was. This is the behaviour I'm used to with (x)emacs and is the 
> behaviour I expect, but I can't find out how to force it.
> 
> I have asked great uncle google, and although I find numerous references to an 
> emacs FAQ with a section  "6.4 Editing files as ROOT"  I cannot find the 
> actual content, neither on the intarweb nor on any box I have handy.

root is immaterial and not worth googling.
For the record I googled for "emacs vi hardlinks" and got:

http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/21.5/html/xemacs_17.html#SEC141

Pádraig.