Re: default skel files (Re: PAGER=less)

[Steven Bellovin <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Oct 15, 2011, at 11:41 31AM, Izumi Tsutsui wrote:

> bouyer@ wrote:
>>> IMHO this is a preference issue, and should be left to users to set in
>>> their own dotfiles; people should get raw unix default behavior until
>>> they ask for something different.
>> 
>> Strongly seconded. For example, I strongly hate the global
>> 'alias rm rm -i' found on some systems. Let this decision for the user,
>> please.
> 
> Then, I'd also like to remove (or comment out) the following lines
> in src/etc/skel/dot.cshrc (derived from 4.4BSD Lite2 merge!?):
> 
> ---
> alias h               history 25
> alias j               jobs -l
> alias la      ls -a
> alias lf      ls -FA
> alias ll      ls -lA
> alias su      su -m

I strongly agree that these should be removed.  I *very* strongly believe
that about 'su', since it effectively changes the default behavior of the
command.
> 
> setenv        EDITOR  vi
> setenv        VISUAL  ${EDITOR}
> setenv        EXINIT  'set autoindent'
> setenv        PAGER   more

For these, I'd delete the EXINIT line, and put in the others but commented
out.  They're effectively global choices that affect the behavior of many
commands, but many new users don't know about them.  I also suspect that
there should be a pointer to environ(7) in there (and it should be updated
to mention VISUAL and EDITOR).  Arguably, a few more items from that man
page should appear -- commented out -- in the file.


                --Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb