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From: em@dce.ie (Eamonn McManus)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: How do I do this in VI?
Message-ID: <exex@dce.ie>
Date: 16 Apr 91 16:46:47 GMT
References: <1991Apr15.223037.23316@massey.ac.nz> <1991Apr15.233023.10882@convex.com>
Organization: Datacode Communications Ltd, Dublin, Ireland
Lines: 20

tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
>>1) Copy and paste every line in a file, for eg.
>:%s/.*/&^M&/
>>2) Insert a blank line after every line. For eg
>:%s/$/^M/

This isn't guaranteed to work in all versions of vi.  The most portable
way to do, e.g., 2) is to escape to ex (with Q) and do
%s/$/\
/
The idea of allowing ^M to mean newline on the RHS of a substitute was
introduced, according to the comments, "to get rid of the last reason
for using ex" (or words to that effect).  In my view it is ill-conceived
because it is counterintuitive -- you have to use \^M to substitute in a
real ^M.  A proper solution would have been to allow : escapes from vi
to contain more than one line, so that the solution above would work
from vi too.

,
Eamonn