Xref: utzoo news.misc:3698 news.newusers.questions:694 Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!stl!dww 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 Lines: 21 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