Hi I am sachin Puri I am new linux user. I have following observation in case of vim editor and have some question regarding it so whole scenario is like given below . What I have done and observe
Case 1 - I set all permissions (rwx) for owner on parent directory. (I am the owner.) $ ls -ld dir drwxrwxrwx 2 sachin sachin 4096 Mar 7 13:42 dir and has structhure like below /home/sachin/dir/text.text
In this case when editing the file "text.text", vim creates a temporary swap file in that directory. When the file is saved, the swap file is deleted and the inode number of "text.text" changes (it is different from the inode number of the original file and also the swap file).
Case 2 - Write permission is removed from parent directory $ ls -ld dir dr-xr-xr-x 2 sachin sachin 4096 Mar 7 13:42 dir
In this case when editing the file "text.text", vim creates a temporary swap file in /var/tmp. After saving the file, its inode does not change.
This means that in case 2, vim is updating the contents of the file in-place. I have found that OpenOffice.org also updates the contents in-place, irrespective of the parent directory permissions.
I wish to know why does vim create a new file in case 1. Wouldn't it be a costly operation, especially in case of large files? In short, which method is more efficient to implement for any file editor?
Please note that in all cases, all permissions are set on the file itself (i.e. text.text). I am just manipulating the permissions of the parent directory.
thanks in advance