Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!ria!alex.ctrg.rri.uwo.ca!lrb
From: lrb@alex.ctrg.rri.uwo.ca (Lance R. Bailey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: How to lose a file using HP-UX's vi !!!!!!!!!
Message-ID: <2103@ria.ccs.uwo.ca>
Date: 23 Jan 91 11:41:57 GMT
References: <796@sdrc.UUCP> <101950176@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com>
Sender: news@ria.ccs.uwo.ca
Organization: CTRG, Robarts Research Institute  London, Canada
Lines: 27

In article <101950176@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com> tomg@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Thomas J. Gilg) writes:
>
>> resides becomes full while you are in vi, vi won't tell you it can't write
>> the file back out and it will then exit !!!!!!
>         vi gives you some
>short cuts for writing/exiting, but at the expense of safety.  I've run
>into disk full situations before and the ":wq" way out has protected me.

here here!   the shortcut is "ZZ" and the person who thought of it should
be shot. I teach all my niave users to use :wq because ZZ is 'helpful' and
can cause grief occasionally. my favourite example is 

user sends mail (automatic vi edit) because they want a copy of all
outgoing mail i wrote a macro for 'p' that does :w ! lp -dlj
-onobanner^M^M to write the letter to the laser.  now they were doing
this as the last thing before exiting the editor, (why get a copy of
what wasn't sent) then when the used ZZ to exit, the file, since
unedited since last write (nevermind that last write was NOT to the
file) was not save and the original buffer (empty file) was sent to the
recipient.  telling them to not use ZZ solved the bug.


-- 
Lance R. Bailey  Systems Manager        box: Robarts Research Institute
          email: lrb@rri.uwo.ca              Clinical Trials Resources Group
            fax: 519.663.3789                P.O. Box 5015, 100 Perth Dr.
            vox: 519.663.3787 ext. 4108      London, Canada N6A 5K8