Re: vim not showing correct contents of file

On Sep 6, 9:07 am, Samuel Quiring <sbq...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was using gVim on Windows 7 to edit the FileZilla config file
> fzdefaults.xml:
>
> 1. Use Windows Explorer to browse to C:\Program Files\FileZilla FTP Client
> 2. right-click on fzdefaults.xml, select "edit with Vim" from the context
> menu
> 3. change the file
> 4. write out the change, exiting vim with :wq
> 5. repeat steps 1 and 2 to verify the change is in the file:  Vim shows the
> change.
>     5.1 edit Vim with :q
> 6. run Filezilla - it behaves as if the change is not in.
> 7. repeat steps 1 and 2 to verify: vim shows the change is there
> 8. run FileZilla - it behaves as if the change is not in
> 9. look at the file with Notepad - the change is *not *in the file.
>
> Vim is telling me the file has certain contents, when in fact it does not.
>  This is a
> bug, right?  Also, I noticed at this point that the modify date of the file
> was still
> over a year ago.
>
> Apparently on Windows 7 a program has to be run as administrator to change a
> file in C:\program files.   I was able to fix the problem by starting Vim as
> Administrator and then editing the file.
>

This sounds like the "Virtualization" which Vista introduced, whereby
a non-admin user attempting to edit system files or computer-wide
registry values actually appears to succeed, but instead is editing a
copy of the file in their own user space. The process is transparent
to the user (intentionally) so that they do not know they are editing
the "wrong" file. Since it is virtualized per-program, Notepad would
not realize it.

I'm not sure of any of the details of how this works, or how to turn
it off (or on), but that's what it sounds like to me. Not a bug in
Vim, but a "feature" of Windows.

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