On Wed 21 Jun 2023 at 21:25:15 (+0000), Andy Smith wrote: > On Wed, Jun 21, 2023 at 04:53:06PM +0100, David Wright wrote: > > On Wed 21 Jun 2023 at 12:31:20 (+0000), Andy Smith wrote: > > > feature rich editors like vim and emacs can easily write to files > > > through sudo or sftp, thus enabling seamless editing of files as > > > different users and even on different hosts. > > > I don't recall ever editing a file as root and needing anything > > beyond the capabilities of nano. What kind of "advanced" editing > > would one do? > > I'm saying that the more advanced editors have features to only do > the I/O as root, so one can enjoy all the other features of the > editor without running the whole editor as root, so that bypasses > the issue of "it's a bad idea to run a complex app (editor) as > root". You can just run it as you and still write to such files when > you need to.
Perhaps we're talking about mitigating different problems. It's not the size and complexity of advanced editors etc that worries me (cf browsers), but the fact that the odd keystroke, used in error, can do a lot of damage. For example mc, although by default having confirm_delete=true, has safe_delete=false, meaning that the confirmation dialog box has Yes (confirm) preselected. > I personally feel that it was a force multiplier for me when I went > from nano¹ to a more complex editor, but I'm not going to try to > convince anyone else. Yes, it's the multiplication that I fear. > ¹ Well, pico for me, which was what nano was a clone of. Or, long ago, ae. Cheers, David.
