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From: scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us (Steve Simmons)
Newsgroups: alt.security,comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: Here's how to stop shell escapes from vi
Message-ID: <1990Sep29.174723.523@lokkur.dexter.mi.us>
Date: 29 Sep 90 17:47:23 GMT
References: <924@mwtech.UUCP> <27387:Sep2320:07:3890@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1990Sep24.040745.10454@chinet.chi.il.us> <1038:Sep2414:36:0390@k <935@mwtech.UUCP> <1990Sep27.215910.11192@hriso.ATT.COM>
Organization: Inland Sea
Lines: 20


In article <935@mwtech.UUCP> martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel) writes:
>. . . . and whoops, vi throws you into ex-mode.

>Nice feature - who would ever have thought? Possibly some user which
>you carefully tried to keep away from ex-prompts knows this little
>"feature" (who said it is a bug?).

bhh@hriso.ATT.COM (Brad Hansen) writes:
>Fallback to 'ex' mode when vi hits something beyond its capabilities 
>is a well known feature of vi and the other editors based on ex, 
>although it is admittedly not in the man pages.  What would you 
>prefer, a core dump?

Of course not.  Please recall this thread is about whether or not
it is possible to disable shell escapes in vi without source.  The
point of Weitzels comments is that is probably isn't.  He correctly
leaves the point open as to whether it's a bug or a feature; and for
the sake of this discussion I will do the same.  The end result is
still "No, it's probably not possible."