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From: news@rosevax.Rosemount.COM (News administrator)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Trojan horse FIX for Rnmail and Pnews
Message-ID: <6811@rosevax.Rosemount.COM>
Date: 7 Dec 88 15:16:06 GMT
References: <6798@rosevax.Rosemount.COM> <591@auspex.UUCP>
Reply-To: merlyn@ernie.Rosemount.COM (Brian Westley)
Organization: Rosemount Inc., Burnsville, MN
Lines: 28

> = Guy Harris
>For that matter, I don't remember whether the older (e.g., 4.2BSD)
>versions of "vi" had a "nomodeline" option.

Not having an older vi, I can't tell either.  If anyone has a vi
that doesn't understand +set nomodeline[s], they should speak up.

>And, even though the S5R3 one has an option like that, it calls it
>"modelines", not "modeline", sigh.

Not having Vr3, I didn't know this.  Feel free to post corrections.
Ideally, the configuration program would figure it out itself, and
also determine if an editor called 'edit' exists and is a version of
ex (I felt 'edit' was too likely to be the name of a non-ex-derived
editor and didn't include it in my followup correction).

>If you insist on sticking "+set nomodeline" here, rather than in the
>user's ".exrc" where it belongs...

No, it belongs in any code that puts uncontrolled text into a file
and executes a "vi"-like editor.  A number of vi's have "modeline"
on by default, and many people don't know about it.  If Pnews can be
made more robust, it should be.

Now for a different question... any other common editors (emacs, etc) with
a similar hook?  Any way to disable it?

Merlyn LeRoy