How to prevent VI from getting a shell?

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <501 at trux.UUCP> car at trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) writes:
>If I want to give someone access to VI and yet deny them access to a shell,
>how do I prevent the user from using VI's "<ESC>:!" command?

>I have an application program which launches VI. I don't want the user to
>be able to get to a shell from VI. (I also don't want the user to be able
>to launch other commands from VI. I.e., No :!pwd, or !!sort, etc...).

Sorta defeats the purpose of using vi unless you really don't have any
useful programs to :r !command or :w !command.  But, if that's what you
want, why not build a suitable environment in a subdirectory (TMPDIR,
vi itself, etc.) and chroot() before starting vi.  It's hard to hurt
anything if you can't get there.

Les Mikesell
  les at chinet.chi.il.us