unexpected softupdate inconsistency

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2004-Mar-11 11:14:01 +1100, Gregory Bond <gnb at itga.com.au> wrote:
>The key phrase here is "What does vim do here _that rm doesn't_?"
>
>If vim is also just using unlink() then rm can (theoretically) do the job just
>as well.  It seems like really odd advice to say "use vim because rm can't do
>the job."  If this were in any way true, then I'd call that a serious bug in
>rm.

If the filename to delete includes non-printing or magic-to-the-shell
characters (and especially ones with the top bit set), it can be
difficult to specify the filename as a command-line argument to rm(1).
In these cases, directory-editing modes in editors (or a scripting
language like perl) can be very helpful.

This isn't a bug in rm(1) and is not necessarily a bug in the shell.
It is fairly common when [l]users use GUI tools to create files or
use sockaddr_in addresses on AF_UNIX sockets - which I've seen done.

-- 
Peter Jeremy