SUMMARY - vi temporary file !!

Dennis Martens (MARTENSD@health.qld.gov.au)
Thu, 26 Mar 1998 11:51:23 +1000

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The attachment is REALLY attached this time.

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I posted a question re: the temporary file created by vi. We have users who vi large files,
and we had a problem with the large temporary files being created. I wanted to know why the
'view' command also created this file, and was there a way to stop it.

I have summarised some of the replies in case they benefit others, but I have not followed
up all of the suggestions, as I may take the easier(!) option of re-educating the users.

Thanks to all for these responses:

no, you can't stop vi using a temporary file - David Evans , Kevin Sheehan
view is not truly r-only, you can W! to save changes, so you need a temp file -David Evans
vi and view are the same, both use a temp file - David Thorburn-Gundlach , Brad Young
point .exrc to a non-writable directory - David Harte (didn't work!)
use vim (http://www.vim.org/) - Troy Wollenslegel , Frank Cusack
use sed or GNU's nvi (ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu.) - Rich Kulawiec , Brian Sherwood
use less (http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.html) - Gene Rackow , Eugene Kramer , Brad Young ,
Peter Polasek , Michael Hill
use split to break the file up into smaller files - Mark Hargrave

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