a question about evim

[Paul Lussier]

"Michael ODonnell" <michael.odonnell at comcast.net> writes:

>>> I'd advise getting used to/enjoying [...] backups.
> 	[...]
>>I don't know how long it would take me to kill my
>>computer if I couldn't turn that off
>
> Amen!  Backup files like that have caused me MUCH more
> trouble than they've ever been worth.  For example, 
[...]

> those backup files would be silently evaluated AFTER the "real"
> files and basically inflict the previous config on them.

Wow!  That's some really poor script writing!  I can only imagine a
loop like this:

  for i in /etc/sysconfig/networking/ifcfg.*
  do
   ...
  done

Seldom is it that I prefer the BSD approach to config files where
everything is in one file, but I definitely prefer the debian
/etc/network/interfaces to RH's /etc/sysconfig/networking/ifcfg.*

The debian approach by it's nature mitigates against this type of bug.
However, it is also more complex, since they have to also write a
config file parser to deal with it, whereas RH's approach is elegant
and simple, since they just need to source the file and eval the
variables which get set as a result.

Of course, this problem is simply one of poor shell script writing,
and would be equally as possible with the single file approach if you
were careless enough :)

-- 

Seeya,
Paul