Re: sed -i should require write access (was: Bug in sed)

[John Cowan]

Paul Eggert scripsit:

> Yes, but still, it's bogus that "sed -i" overwrites a read-only file.
> That's not what users expect, and it's not what the documentation says.
> The documentation says that -i "overwrites the file in place", which
> implies that you must have write access to the file.

I agree that allowing sed -i to "overwrite" a read-only file violates
the Principle of Least Astonishment.  I can see why it does so *on
reflection*, but it certainly isn't what I would expect, and I'm certainly
no newbie.

I don't consider breaking bug-for-bug compatibility with Perl
particularly important.  Perl does *lots* of astonishing things.
Backward compatibility *is* an issue, but it could be phased in by having
one release print a loud and obnoxious warning that this behavior will
stop working, and the next release actually remove it.

-- 
John Cowan              address@hidden          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Historians aren't constantly confronted with people who carry on
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