From owner-freebsd-stable Tue May 1 9:37:33 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from wopr.caltech.edu (wopr.caltech.edu [131.215.102.114]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1589C37B422 for ; Tue, 1 May 2001 09:37:30 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mph@wopr.caltech.edu) Received: (from mph@localhost) by wopr.caltech.edu (8.11.3/8.11.0) id f41GbJm53278; Tue, 1 May 2001 09:37:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mph) Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 09:37:19 -0700 From: Matthew Hunt To: "Steve O'Hara-Smith" Cc: Juha Saarinen , dmmiller@cvzoom.net, stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: tail Message-ID: <20010501093719.A52533@wopr.caltech.edu> References: <3AED6781.8746018D@cvzoom.net> <20010501073018.748a7f1d.steveo@eircom.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20010501073018.748a7f1d.steveo@eircom.net>; from steveo@eircom.net on Tue, May 01, 2001 at 07:30:18AM +0200 Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, May 01, 2001 at 07:30:18AM +0200, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote: > JS> Not sure about this; if you e.g. vi a directory, it will warn you that it > > It is dangerous to vi a directory, but it is not dangerous to tail > one. More to the point, opening a directory for writing is an error. Since you normally use an editor to modify files, instead of just viewing them, it makes sense that vi warns you that you won't be able to write back your changes. It would not make sense for tail to warn you, because it only reads files. wopr:~$ perl -e 'open SPORK, ">tmp/" or die "$!"' Is a directory at -e line 1. wopr:~$ perl -e 'open SPORK, "tmp/" or die "$!"' wopr:~$ (See also "man 2 open".) -- Matthew Hunt * Clearly there are more things in the http://www.pobox.com/~mph/ * heavens than anyone anticipated. -enp To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message