When Vim is called from crontab -e it will not work if the 'backup' option is set to no or auto. (I get the error message

crontab: temp file must be edited in place

when exiting Vim.) There is some information at :help crontab but it does not suggest how to fix the problem. So far, adding this to my vimrc file seems to work:

au BufEnter /private/tmp/crontab.* setl backupcopy=yes

The temporary file created by crontab on Mac OS X is named something like /private/tmp/crontab.XXXXXXXXXX (with a random string of characters at the end). On other systems, you may need to use a different pattern.

Another option that can be set in vimrc tip from ( http://tim.theenchanter.com/2008_07_01_archive.html ) is

set backupskip=/tmp/*,/private/tmp/*

CommentsEdit