@edit read-only?

When I @edit 2 + 2, I can change the source code of addition. That seems dangerous. In fact, I only use @edit to inspect source code, to learn how a library works and things like that. I almost never do any edits. Is there a way to make sure @edit opens source files in read-only mode?

Maybe use @less 2+2 instead just to view the code?

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How would it do that? @edit just opens the file. If you editor supports command line arguments to open files read only, then call it like that, otherwise I don’t see how this would work.

Some editors (eg Emacs) allow making buffers read-only, or you can do a chmod -R on your julia source to prevent modification.

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Perfect, I did

ENV["JULIA_EDITOR"] = "vim -R"

and then @edit 2 + 2 is read-only. Thanks!

Too bad Sublime Text doesn’t seem to have a command line flag for read-only mode.

This works… but it is very hard to read without syntax highlighting.

Horrible hack of the day:

#!/bin/bash
FILE=$1
ALT=${FILE}_readonly
if [ -f $ALT ]
then
   echo "$ALT already exists, not overwriting" && exit 0
fi
cp -n $FILE $ALT
chmod a-w $ALT
$EDITOR $ALT
rm -f $ALT

Makes a copy, makes that read-only for good measure, opens it in the editor, then removes it when done. Use at your own risk — I am the world’s worst bash programmer, there is probably some corner case that wipes your hard disk and makes your computer explode. (You can probably write a better one with 5 minutes of googling.)

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