Re: [Nano-devel] Patch for bug #44950

[Rishabh Dave]

> However, it does not do what I would have thought.
>
> Currently, when I try to open a directory, nano beeps and says
> that the given name is a directory.  For example, do:
>
>    src/nano  doc/
>
> Result on the statusbar: [ "doc" is a directory ]
>
> But with your patch, nano now simply opens a blank buffer,
> without any complaint.  It ignores the doc/ as if the user
> typed nothing at all.  That is not good.  If the user typed
> something, she meant to edit something; she did not mean to
> open a blank buffer.
>
> So... this is not the way to solve bug #44950
> (https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?44950).
>
> Yes, the bug report suggests to discard anything on
> the command line that is not a real and readable file,
> but that was apparently not a good idea.
>
> I now think that nano should report, for an argument
> of the type nondir/filename, on the statusbar that
> nondir is a nonexistent directory.
>
> However, most other editors will open a blank buffer,
> and will only complain at the moment the user tries
> to save the file.  Pico, vim, emacs, gedit...
>
> What should nano do?
I had same confusion before. And I haven't used any console
 text editor except nano or vim, so I followed vim as
closely as possible. I will try to do as you said
> No problem.  Better would be to check out SVN,
> and make your changes there, and then create a
> patch simply with 'svn diff >this.patch'.  You can
> check out the current state of the source tree with:
>
>    svn co svn://svn.savannah.gnu.org/nano/trunk/nano
May I skip using a version/revision control system? I tried to learn
using one before, but being beginner I thought it would be better to
avoid using complicated tools to avoid complicated lessons.