Request: no exit confirmation by default

[egmont]

I'd like to recommend a trivial change in the default configuration, namely Exit should be executed without confirmation.

I know there's a config option for that, so anyone with a firm preference for one behavior or the other can just configure it for himself/herself. I strongly believe that the right behavior for new users or for those who don't really care about it is to quit immediately. Here's why:

• Most of the applications just quit without confirmation, unless data would be lost. Doing so would make mc behave more similarly to most of the applications. I'm sure everyone can think of many apps that quit without confirmation (unless there's data to save), and only a few that always ask. The former group even includes mcview and mcedit - unlike mc, they also do the usual thing.

• If you accidentally quit mc, you don't lose anything. You just start mc again and you're back to where you were. Given how rarely you would accidentally do this, you'll lose less time than you lose currently on that extra confirmation every time.

• Because of this useless confirmation dialog, pressing "F10 Enter" becomes a routine key combo that you press quickly after each other, without reading the dialog. There's no point in a dialog that you don't read after a while. Moreover, it makes it less prominent if mc has something else to say, e.g. warn about background sessions. When exit confirmation is enabled (the current default), it's not prominent if there's a different text in the popup, and you easily routinely press Enter to quit despite background tasks. When exit confirmation is disabled (my proposed default), you still get a confirmation when there are background operations, hence the actual warning about losing something important becomes more prominent. [See the boy who cried wolf...]

• Before turning off this option for myself, I once or twice accidentally quickly hit "F8 Enter" instead of "F10 Enter", accidentally deleting a file. Ever since I turned off confirmation for myself (about ten years ago), it has never happend. I still hit F8 every once in a while instead of F10, but it's no longer harmful since I don't routinely hit Enter immediately afterwards, and I get blocked on an unexpected confirmation dialog. (This story is quite similar to the previous one, when you press F10 but there are background tasks.)

• Gnome HIG says "Present a confirmation alert when the user's command may destroy their data, create a security risk, or take more than 30 seconds of user effort to recover from if it was selected in error" (​https://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.4/windows-alert.html.en) I know mc is not a Gnome project, but both are GNU, and this entry seems to me more like common sense written down, rather than a Gnome-specific rule.

• I used to work on a Linux distribution (called UHU, it was very popular in Hungary), for a decade or so it's been shipping mc with such a patch, AFAICT nobody complained so far.

• I was trying hard to think about any reason why exit confirmation is ever useful. I couldn't find any, I believe it's enabled for historical reason only: it's always been so.

[ossi]

when you quit mc, you lose:

• the PWD if you didn't start it with the wrapper function
• the subshell's history, if you didn't configure your shell correctly (at least in the case of bash)

obviously, both of these consequences are (usually) minor, and represent a configuration problem to start with.

i turn off the confirmation as one of the first things when starting mc in a new environment. who doesn't?

[andrew_b]

Fixed as [57feb5a2bccd022458a940e128f0b86ffede6168].