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From: wls@astrovax.UUCP (William L. Sebok)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: unable to abort replies
Message-ID: <484@astrovax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Nov-84 23:08:28 EST
Article-I.D.: astrovax.484
Posted: Tue Nov  6 23:08:28 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 8-Nov-84 07:19:22 EST
Organization: Princeton Univ. Astrophysics
Lines: 24

There is something not very robust about the method of cancelling replies
from vnews (2.10.2).  Supposedly if one exits from the editor without
editing the file it should cancel the reply.  However there seems to be
a high probablility that the reply will get sent anyway.  I have been
embarassed more than once by this (although as a superuser I have often
been able to zap it before it got out).  This has happened when all I have
done is (from vi) immediately type ZZ to get out.   It seems to happen most
often when one exits right away (like right after you have hit "r" by mistake).

I see from the code that the criteria for cancelling the reply is that
the modification time of the file be same after invoking the editor as
before.  I can't really visualize right now why this would fail but
maybe it is due to 1 second time quantization (although it would seem
to me to be more likely to fail in the sense of erroneously cancelling
a reply). 

Does anybody have any ideas?  In case it makes any difference we are running
4.2 BSD.  Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to add another test like
cancelling the reply if the size of the edited file has not grown after the
editing.  This would also be robust against a person starting to edit a reply
but deciding against it after having started it.
-- 
Bill Sebok			Princeton University, Astrophysics
{allegra,akgua,burl,cbosgd,decvax,ihnp4,noao,princeton,vax135}!astrovax!wls