Re: vulnerability in vi under AIX 3.2 (IN LINUX)

[zblaxell () MYRUS COM (Zygo Blaxell)]

Quoted from kay hashimoto:
>  >'vim file' will happily scribble all over 'file.swp', without regard to
>  >who owns it, what it's a symlink to, etc.  Further, in the event of a
>  >system crash, the .swp file is left lying around, causing unpredictable
>  >results if you use vim to edit files in SysV-style init runlevel
>  >directories.
>
> When does vim do this?  One of the purposes of the .swp file is to
> prevent concurrent editing of one file, so when vim sees file.swp in
> the current directory, it gives a warning and writes to file.swo.

Errr...oops, I stand corrected:  It only writes to an existing .swp if
it is a symlink to a non-existant file.


--
Zygo Blaxell. Unix/soft/hardware guru, was for U of Waterloo CS Club, now for
(name withheld by request). 10th place, ACM Intl Collegiate Programming Contest
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