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Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users Why is editing a file by renaming the new one safer? Post 303042580 by Neo on Monday 30th of December 2019 11:35:38 AM
Old 12-30-2019
Practically speaking,

It depends on your risk management model.

If your system is prone to crashing or locking up, then it might be a better idea to copy the file to another server and do the edits, then load it up to the server and move it into place.

Sounds fishy, however, if your server is so unstable that it is prone to crashing or has such resource problems.

Normally, and I mean everyday on remote, production servers, I copy the file I want to edit and add a ".backup" or ".neo" extension on it, or something like that. But I generally edit the original file and save it to disk when I'm done.

When editing, you are editing a copy in memory, not the copy on disk; so if the system crashes while you are editing, you only lose the changes in the editor, not the file on disk.

I guess, one could say that when you cross the street, you should look right, then left, then up, and then down, and to be safe, look behind you too. However, most of us look right and left. If you want to edit copies and move them that's cool but it is not going to change much in your life compared to editing the original and saving it.

What is important, as mentioned by others and also by me again here, is to make a quick backup copy of a file before . you edit. I do this most of the time, even when I have offsite backups.

Making a copy, editing the copy, and moving it to replace the original file is still "not perfect" because you have still written over your original. You should at least make a copy, edit the original, and save it, knowing you have a fresh backup. If you copy the original, edit the copy, and move it to overwrite the original, where is your fresh backup? You don't have one (in this scenario). Ditto if you copy the file you just edited over the original, you then have two potentially "fat fingered" copies.

So, what's the point? What is the risk? What is the system vulnerability you are trying to mitigate?

Last edited by hicksd8; 12-30-2019 at 01:10 PM..
This User Gave Thanks to Neo For This Post:
 

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File::Inplace(3pm)					User Contributed Perl Documentation					File::Inplace(3pm)

NAME
File::Inplace - Perl module for in-place editing of files SYNOPSIS
use File::Inplace; my $editor = new File::Inplace(file => "file.txt"); while (my ($line) = $editor->next_line) { $editor->replace_line(reverse $line); } $editor->commit; DESCRIPTION
File::Inplace is a perl module intended to ease the common task of editing a file in-place. Inspired by variations of perl's -i option, this module is intended for somewhat more structured and reusable editing than command line perl typically allows. File::Inplace endeavors to guarantee file integrity; that is, either all of the changes made will be saved to the file, or none will. It also offers functionality such as backup creation, automatic field splitting per-line, automatic chomping/unchomping, and aborting edits partially through without affecting the original file. CONSTRUCTOR
File::Inplace offers one constructor that accepts a number of parameters, one of which is required. File::Inplace->new(file => "filename", ...) file The one required parameter. This is the name of the file to edit. suffix The suffix for backup files. If not specified, no backups are made. chomp If set to zero, then automatic chomping will not be performed. Newlines (actually, the contents of $/) will remain in strings returned from "next_line". Additionally, the contents of $/ will not be appended when replacing lines. regex If specified, then each line will be split by this parameter when using "next_line_split" method. If unspecified, then this defaults to s+. separator The default character used to join each line when replace_line is invoked with a list instead of a single value. Defaults to a single space. INSTANCE METHODS
$editor->next_line () In scalar context, it returns the next line of the input file, or undef if there is no line. In an array context, it returns a single value of the line, or an empty list if there is no line. $editor->replace_line (value) Replaces the current line in the output file with the specified value. If passed a list, then each valie is joined by the "separator" specified at construction time. $editor->next_line_split () Line "next_line", except splits based on the "regex" specified in the constructor. $editor->has_lines () Returns true if the file contains any further lines. $editor->all_lines () Returns an array of all lines in the file being edited. $editor->replace_all_lines (@lines) Replaces all remaining lines in the file with the specified @lines. $editor->commit () Completes the edit operation and saves the changes to the edited file. $editor->rollback () Aborts the edit process. $editor->commit_to_backup () Saves edits to the backup file instead of the original file. AUTHOR
Chip Turner, <chipt@cpan.org> COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright (C) 2005 by Chip Turner This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.6.0 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available. perl v5.14.2 2012-03-06 File::Inplace(3pm)
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