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From: dww@stl.stc.co.uk (David Wright)
Newsgroups: news.misc,news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Two apparent forgeries
Summary: Watch out for vi behaviour when following up articles
Message-ID: <2235@stl.stc.co.uk>
Date: 30 Sep 89 13:58:47 GMT
References: <957.252267FF@tlsi.FIDONET.ORG> <6348@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Sender: news@stl.stc.co.uk
Reply-To: "David Wright" 
Followup-To: news.misc
Organization: STC Technology Limited, London Road, Harlow, Essex, UK
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In article <6348@pt.cs.cmu.edu> spok@gs6.sp.cs.cmu.edu (John Ockerbloom) writes:
#A few days ago, a blank article with this signature appeared ...

From time to time either blank postings or (worse) followups containing the
whole original article but no further comment appear on the net.  I wondered
how people could be so dumb, till I did it myself :-) (fortunately I noticed 
and cancelled it).   

The problem lies in vi: if you save to a file, then exit without further
change, vi won't alter the original file, EVEN IF YOU SAVED TO A DIFFERENT
FILE.      So if you make yourself a 'security copy' just before you exit
and post your article, you won't post what you thought you'd posted :-)

Whether this is the cause of the case cited I don't know, but it is
certainly a "gotya" to watch out for.   And maybe warn about somewhere 
where new users might just see it?

--
Regards,  "Just 'cos you CAN send messages everywhere, doesn't mean you HAVE to"
        David Wright           STL, London Road, Harlow, Essex  CM17 9NA, UK
dww@stl.stc.co.uk  ...uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!dww  PSI%234237100122::DWW