[ On Thursday, June 15, 2000 at 13:24:25 (-0400), Avi Green wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: merging
>
> > > Deleting a file is much more severe than just deleting a few
> > > lines. Perhaps there should be a warning if more than a certain
> > > number (which could be a configurable threshold) of lines is being
> > > deleted. An analogy from another world: If you try to format your
> > > hard drive in DOS, it warns you first. It doesn't do that if it's
> > > a floppy.
> >
> > Just because MS-DOS is stupid (and assumes the user is too), doesn't
> > mean CVS should be.....
>
> Emacs does it too: when the buffer has shrunk a lot, it won't autosave.
> And at least one text editor warns you, if you try to save your file
> after deleting all of the text in the buffer, that the file is empty and
> will be deleted if you continue.
>
> I, for one, am glad of it.
That feature has caused me just as many problems as it has offered so
save me from my mistakes. However that's getting way off the
appropriate track for this analogy....
Emacs has an interactive, incremental, user interface, not a batch-style
command-line interface where you already have to explicitly tell the
computer to do whatever dangerous operation you're trying. Not only
that but in an interactive editor with a modeless interface it's trivial
to zap a good portion of the file contents but not be able to see this
fact easily without performing additional special tasks. Finally note
that in CVS the merge is *very* easily undone (that's the whole idea of
using CVS in the first place, after all!).
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Secrets of the Weird <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
