Re: ensure that generated files are read-only

[Paul Eggert]

Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:

> If it's really a major annoyance, you should switch to
> an editor that lets you circumvent such things more easily.
> In Emacs, C-xC-q is the typical binding to toggle read-only.
> For Vi, to save a file owned by you, in spite of its read-only
> setting, just use :w!

I suspect he's objecting to even these minor hassles.

Also, :w! does not overwrite readonly files in Bill Joy's original
"vi", which I still commonly use (I just tested this on Solaris 10).
(I still prefer the original "vi" to VIM since my fingers are used to
its behavior.  :-)

And perhaps other people use other editors; we can't really expect
everyone to switch to Emacs or VIM.


> I was wondering about the 14-byte file name length limitation that
> we've worried about over the years.  But it's been so long since anyone
> has reported a problem with longer names, that I suspect they dropped
> out of common usage some time ago.

I tend to agree.  For what it's worth, POSIX with the XSI extension
has required support for 255-byte file names since 2001.  Plain POSIX
still only requires 14-byte file names, but even platforms claiming
support for only plain POSIX support 255, on all practical development
platforms I'm aware of.  (Runtime environments could well be
different.)