为何Mac下view命令（软链至vim）会自动以只读模式打开文件？

Great question! This is actually a built-in feature of Vim—it checks the name it was called by, then switches to the corresponding mode automatically.

Here's the breakdown:

• When you run /usr/bin/view /path/to/file, Vim looks at the 0th command-line argument (which is the name the program was invoked as, in this case view). If it detects this name matches view, it automatically enables the readonly mode—this is exactly equivalent to running vim -R /path/to/file or manually typing :set readonly after opening Vim.
• You can test this logic easily: create your own symlink to Vim (e.g., ln -s /usr/bin/vim ~/myview), then use ~/myview test.txt to open a file. You'll see it enters read-only mode just like the system's view command. Conversely, if you force Vim to be called as view (using exec -a view vim test.txt), it will also trigger the read-only behavior.
• This pattern is common in Vim: other symlinks like vimdiff (for diff mode) or ex (for line-editor mode) work the same way—they're all pointing to the same Vim binary, but Vim adjusts its behavior based on the invocation name.

When you try to edit a file opened via view, you'll get a warning like W10: Warning: Changing a readonly file—this is Vim enforcing the read-only state that was automatically enabled based on the call name.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者iampkuhz