Windows 7? Two different versions of a file depending on how it is accessed

Andrew Hancock andymhancock@gmail.com
Sun Jun 26 15:20:00 GMT 2011


Sorry, this thread has been superseded by "Divergent file system
contents, Cygwin versus Windows 7"
(http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.cygwin/127335).  During the thick
of troubleshooting, I lost track of the fact that I posted this
earlier understanding of the problem.

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 10:40 AM, Andrew Hancock <andymhancock@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am seeing two different versions of a file depending on how I access
> it.  Specifically, the file "C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim\_vimrc" uses
> plain text to provide startup specifications for the text editor gvim.
>  This is the standalone installation for Windows, not the one the one
> that comes with Cygwin.  However, that is just the problem context.
> The real issue is that I see two different versions of that file.  The
> first version is the original one that came with the installation.  I
> modified it by adding the lines:
>
>   set guioptions-=m
>   set guioptions-=T
>
> I got a warning that the file is read-only.  It isn't according
> read-only to "ls -l", but I thought that the discrepancy must have
> been due to Windows 7's more complicated security (which I haven't
> completely figured out).  I forced the save with "w!", tested it by
> restarting gvim, and found that the settings did not take.  I wondered
> whether the file actually contained the above two lines that I added.
>
> It turns out that it depends on how the file is accessed.  If I access
> the file using notepad or windows-based gvim, the two added lines are
> not present (same thing if I use Windows's "more" from cmd.exe).  On
> the other hand, if I access the file using vim or less from cygwin's
> bash shell, the two added lines *are* present.  After googling about
> different versions of files on Windows 7, I found that one possible
> cause might be the backups that the OS makes.  However, I confirmed
> that this particular file has no backups.
>
> Right now, I am not sure whether this is a Windows 7 problem or a
> cygwin problem (or more likely, an interaction between them).  Can
> anyone suggest a next possible course of action?  I don't want to
> force both copies to be the same by simply editting the file using the
> Windows-base gvim.  This hides a problem that will doubtlessly come
> back and cause great grief.
>

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