On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 2:25 PM, Charles Campbell < charles.e.campb...@nasa.gov> wrote:
> Marty Fried wrote: > >> >> I agree. That is why I believe that if someone is using root account for >> something, it is probably for maintenance, or to fix a problem. It may be >> that the person has root access for maintenance, but is not in the sudo >> users file, and doesn't have time to set it up for a one-time use. >> >> >> Nice philosophy, but: I suspect that due to the free nature of the > various linux distros, there are quite a few "root" users who only barely > know what they're doing. Having a complex editor like Vim doing things > (such as backups, changing permissions, changing ownership) isn't a good > idea imho. Such things should be done explicitly (ie. chmod,chgrp, chown, > or by menu); requiring all the barely to somewhat competent root > administrators to have mastered all the nuances of vim is naive. > Admittedly, I didn't go over all 83 hits I got with helpgrep in detail. > I guess I spoke somewhat out of ignorance; I wasn't aware that Vim did those things. I don't even know how, and I'm not sure if I want to know. :) I use the explicit methods you mentioned. I'm a simple kind of guy, and I like things to be pretty modular, so I know what will happen. When I use an editor, I only expect it to change the contents of the file. It's nice that it allows me, after prompting, to save to a read-only file, and I appreciate it sometimes, but I wouldn't mind if it didn't. I'll admit that I'm somewhat torn in my opinions about protecting barely competent users from themselves. Throughout my long experience with computers, that's mostly the way I learned, by destroying things. I learned things like backing up, not assuming things when the consequences matter, etc. Now, if it were Windows, maybe I would expect the handholding. But I've messed up Windows in the past, too. :) Regards, Marty Fried -- You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
