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From: levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy)
Newsgroups: net.bugs.usg,net.bugs.4bsd
Subject: Re: vi bug?
Message-ID: <1187@ttrdc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 7-Sep-86 21:26:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: ttrdc.1187
Posted: Sun Sep  7 21:26:47 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 8-Sep-86 19:11:46 EDT
References: <1178@ttrdc.UUCP> <659@hropus.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T, Computer Systems Division, Skokie, IL
Lines: 27
Xref: mnetor net.bugs.usg:361 net.bugs.4bsd:921

Thanks to the several people who wrote or posted to say that yes, this
(intercepting ex: or vi: [or ei: or vx: -- yuck] in the first or last few
lines of a file being read in) is an old, old "feature" allowing for auto-
configuration of vi, and that, yawn, it had been hashed over many many
times before on the net.  (Guess I have to get a copy of the compleat net
archives, then, so I won't appear stupid to the oldtimers.  Postpone those
backups, Joe, gotta mount a few dozen magtapes to grep for something :-). )

I sure would have preferred that this behavior wasn't the default, requiring
a command line option or environment variable to turn it on, or at the least
that it could be turned off by a command line option or something in the
$HOME/.exrc file.  In certain contexts, e.g. editing ASCII database files,
it stinks.  I particularly liked the message from the fellow who said that his
version of the vi source code deleted this "feature" by #ifdef SUICIDE
preprocessor directives.  (I have now found it, in the routine checkmodeline()
in ex_io.c.  Not the #ifdef SUICIDE directive, but rather the suicidal code.)

Dan

-- 
 -------------------------------    Disclaimer:  The views contained herein are
|       dan levy | yvel nad      |  my own and are not at all those of my em-
|         an engihacker @        |  ployer or the administrator of any computer
| at&t computer systems division |  upon which I may hack.
|        skokie, illinois        |
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