From owner-freebsd-stable Mon Feb 4 21: 6:50 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from topperwein.dyndns.org (acs-24-154-28-168.zoominternet.net [24.154.28.168]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 03C0A37B404 for ; Mon, 4 Feb 2002 21:06:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from topperwein (topperwein [192.168.168.10]) by topperwein.dyndns.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g1556iG78321 for ; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 00:06:45 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from behanna@zbzoom.net) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 00:06:39 -0500 (EST) From: Chris BeHanna Reply-To: Chris BeHanna To: FreeBSD-Stable Subject: Handholding Editor for rc.conf Message-ID: <20020204235829.D77182-100000@topperwein.dyndns.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > [...flamage re "registry editor" for FreeBSD snipped...] A syntax-aware editor (e.g., vim) will tell you right away when you have mismatched quotes (be they single or double). It won't prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot by writing the file anyway, but it will at least give you some warning. It might be neat to have a heirarchy for rc variables, but "neat" should be tempered by "does it buy us sufficient functionality to be worth the effort invested and the complexity introduced"? Terry's point about doing syntax-checking on rc.conf before the editor lets you exit (a lá vipw or visudo) for administering a remote box is, however, well-taken. The beauty is that a smart enough editor to do that is also smart enough to syntax-check rc.firewall, saving an admin numerous "call the NOC and talk them through fixing the problem" headaches. I should think that it should be a SMOP to add some macros to vim to do this, given that vim is already sh-syntax aware, and rc.conf and rc.firewall are merely shell scripts. That said, vim isn't part of the base system. I think that a vim add-on in ports/sysutils to do this would satisfy nearly all but the heathen emacs users. :-) I'm not a committer (I'm "just" my company's RE), so feel free to file this to /dev/null. -- Chris BeHanna Software Engineer (Remove "bogus" before responding.) behanna@bogus.zbzoom.net I was raised by a pack of wild corn dogs. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message