Re: man dangling symlink question
On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 at 20:30 GMT, David Z Maze penned:
> "Monique Y. Herman" <spam@bounceswoosh.org> writes:
>
>> I'd never heard of update-alternatives or /etc/alternatives until a
>> few days ago on this list, and to be honest I'm still a little (a
>> lot) foggy on what exactly it's used for. For instance, I have
>> /etc/alternatives/vi and /etc/alternatives/editor ... what
>> applications will use these values?
>
> nvi, vim, and elvis (all vi clones) will register alternatives for vi;
> these, plus emacs, xemacs, nano, etc. will be alternatives for editor.
>
Yes, I understand that. What I don't understand is, what uses these
registries? Does the system set $EDITOR to /etc/alternatives/editor
under the cover? Will typing "kedit" suddenly get me vim? What apps
respect alternatives instead of, say, $EDITOR or $PAGER, and how do I
find this out? Or is this just a convenience that I can choose to use
when setting up my own users?
(Also seems weird to me that a bunch of pointers to executables would be
stored in /etc, but maybe that's just me.)
--
monique
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