Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sourceware.org/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 12:40:53 -0500 (EST)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: Colin JN Breame <colin AT breame DOT net>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: File losing ownership
In-Reply-To: <200503091711.03207.colin@breame.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.61.0503091236380.18298@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
References: <200503091711 DOT 03207 DOT colin AT breame DOT net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, Colin JN Breame wrote:

> I have a file such that:
>
> $ ls -l test
> -rw-r--r--  1 Administrators None 6 Mar  9 17:00 test
>
> I open it and save in emacs.
>
> $ ls -l test
> -rw-r--r--  1 colin None 7 Mar  9 17:00 test
>
> Is this a bug?

This is a design "feature" in emacs (and most of the Windows editors as
well).  None of them write files in-place.  What they do is create a copy
of the file with the changes from the editing session.  The inode is also
changed (easy to check), so what you're seeing is a brand new file.  The
old one, IIRC, is renamed to "test~" (I don't use emacs, so can't check).

This, BTW, is one of the reasons you can't use emacs as crontab editor, or
anything else that expects the file to be written in-place.
	Igor
P.S. I think I'm being a bit unfair ("I'm a VIm guy"), and you *can*
configure emacs to write files in-place -- it's just not done by default.
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"The Sun will pass between the Earth and the Moon tonight for a total
Lunar eclipse..." -- WCBS Radio Newsbrief, Oct 27 2004, 12:01 pm EDT

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/