UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,
when using vi editor, why do i automatically create swap file. this is very hard on me as on some systems i do not have remove file permission and swap file is only readable. it always happens to me, regardless of the computer i am using. does not happen to my classmates. i don't even know the procedure to create a swap file.
in the future, how can i prevent creating swap files when writing or editing a file using a vi editor?
any help will be appreciated.

---------- Post updated at 03:24 PM ---------- Previous update was at 02:59 PM ----------

this is not specifically a classroom or a homework problem so plz do not close it.
it is a general problem i wish to resolve whenever i use the vi editor.
thanks.

vi uses /var/tmp for storing temporary versions of the file you edit. This is what you probably mean instead of a swap file.

I think you have your file mask set incorrectly. Unless you specified the directory command in your .exrc file - in your home directory. Assuming you have not tired to write the tmp files someplace odd by accident:

Code:

umask 002

is what you want.

To see your current umask

Code:

umask

The output for this should be 02 -- when it is set correctly.

I'd find it very unusual that you'd be able to create a file, but not remove it. Ask your system administrator about it, it might be a misconfiguration of ACLs or the like.

With vi, you can't disable it AFAIK (although I'm not sure that vi even creates swap files). With vim you can either disable it by running it as vim -n file (for a single instance), by adding set noswapfile in your ~/.vimrc (permanent), or by setting a fixed path for the swap file by adding set dir=/tmp to always create it in /tmp.