Re: [Bug-ed] Bug#461798: warn earlier about readonly files

[jidanni]

> I would not agree that's a problem, and I would disagree that
> such a change should be made.
vi warns, emacs warns.
>  1) Sometimes I edit a read only file, as a convenient way to
>     do other sorts of operations on it.  Opening to read a
>     read-only file is not an error
warning, not error.
>  2) If and when I do try to write out changes to a read-only
>     file, it's easy to deal with the write error by writing my
>     changes out to a tmp file, quitting ed, and applying the
>     changes some other way.
it usually is a big shock to me, and sometimes one discovers there is
no place permanent to write at all -- all that typing will disappear...
>  3) ed is legacy software - most users and usages have been
>     around a long time.  One should not tweak discretionary
>     details of ed; fix real bugs, but leave the details that
>     are cosmetic or a matter of opinion or fashion -alone-.
>     Each non-essential change to ed breaks something or some
>     usage.
OK, maybe
$ ed /etc/motd
355 readonly<--adding this might break scripts, I don't know.
$ ed /etc/motdd
/etc/motdd: No such file or directory<--but one could also remove
warnings like this, and the warning from vi. OK, you are the pros,
what do I know. Anyway, ed should still be around for the next 10000
years, so might as well fix the places that might cause one to lose work.