> > * mktemp is not portable; you could use something like the date and > > process identifier ($$) to create a portable temporary file. > > (I am actually still curious as to whether there is a reasonable > > portable approach that is less sloppy than this.) > > I'm not sure the best way to do that or if it's worth the extra > complication. It is unfortunate that POSIX doesn't have mktemp or a > command to do the same thing. However, mktemp seems to be very widely > available. It is in GNU coreutils (i.e. Gnu/Linux), OpenBSD, NetBSD, > FreeBSD, Mac OS X, HP-UX, Tru64 Unix.
While mktemp is very widely available, I came across systems where it was not, and I came across others where it behaved incompatibly. I think HP-UX was one of the problematic operating systems. I may have made notes on this in the urchin issue tracker and commit history, but I don't remember. http://thomaslevine.com/scm/urchin > > * Quote "$edit" in case the editor has a space in its name. > > I deliberately do not quote $edit so that I can set EDITOR to nano -w. > Is that non-standard/wacky? Is there a convention for whether the the > value of EDITOR environment variable should be able to have options? Dunno about the convention. Please report if you come up with an answer, as I am curious. Here are some ideas of how to handle this. They're in decreasing order of my preference, but the first one is the only one that I think is good. * Quote the variable, set EDITOR equal to "nano-w", and implement "nano-w" as a program that calls "nano -w". * Handle EDITOR and VISUAL one way, and handle two alternative non-standard variables the other way. * Call "eval $EDITOR", so that it is at least possible to specify paths with spaces by quoting the path. * Add a flag that affects how spaces are handled. > > * You haven't handled editor errors. > > I'm not sure the best way to do that or if it's worth the extra > complication. I present one approach in the attachment. It is based on commit 08d2db088dad2f35ce91523eb35b6456dd189031.
diff --git i/edit-pipe w/edit-pipe index 3ceff5f..b0b9351 100755 --- i/edit-pipe +++ w/edit-pipe @@ -24,5 +24,8 @@ fi cat > "$tf" $edit "$tf" < /dev/tty > /dev/tty +code=$? +test 0 -lt $code || test "-v" = "$1" || cat "$tf" rm "$tf" +exit $code
