Re: vulnerability in vi under AIX 3.2 (IN LINUX)

[kjhashim () hcs HARVARD EDU (kay hashimoto)]

> 'vim file' will happily scribble all over 'file.swp', without regard to
> who owns it, what it's a symlink to, etc.  Further, in the event of a
> system crash, the .swp file is left lying around, causing unpredictable
> results if you use vim to edit files in SysV-style init runlevel
> directories.

When does vim do this?  One of the purposes of the .swp file is to
prevent concurrent editing of one file, so when vim sees file.swp in
the current directory, it gives a warning and writes to file.swo.