I need to prompt the user for a file which is 1) not a directory 2) if already exists, is writable.
I know I can use read-file-name, but I'm not sure how to filter out the improper files. Specifically, I need to filter out those are either 1) a directory or 2) read-only (not writable).
The 6th argument to read-file-name is a PREDICATE that filters completion candidates (file names). C-h f read-file-name says, about it:
Sixth arg
PREDICATE, if non-nil, should be a function of one argument; then a file name is considered an acceptable completion alternative only ifPREDICATEreturns non-nilwith the file name as its argument.
The file name passed to the predicate is a relative name, so your predicate function may need to use expand-file-name to obtain an absolute file name. Then you will want to apply function file-directory-p to each candidate, to see if it's a directory, and apply function file-attribute-modes to each candidate, to see if it is writable.
See also (elisp) File Attributes for info about function file-attributes (search for file-attribute-modes in that manual node).
