Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!hp-ses!hpcuhb!hpcllla!hpclisp!hpcljws!jws
From: jws@hpcljws.HP.COM (John Stafford)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: tabs in vi
Message-ID: <720011@hpcljws.HP.COM>
Date: 30 Aug 89 18:51:34 GMT
References: <273@hhb.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Calif. Language Lab
Lines: 10

BEWARE:  Most versions of vi I've seen can trash your file if you pipe
too much though a filter program (like expand).  I have had files
trashed doing exactly 1G!Gexpand.  You get a block of lines replaced
with blank lines and the original lines get moved someplace else and
rotated to various degrees.

I believe a race condition is involved.  While the failure is rare and
correlates positively with increasing file size, I have never known
exactly what triggers it (I'm sure somebody reading this knows and can
enlighten us).