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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!husc6!necntc!drilex!dricej
From: dricej@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Undocumented vi feature
Message-ID: <205@drilex.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25-Jun-87 14:14:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: drilex.205
Posted: Thu Jun 25 14:14:23 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Jun-87 03:45:43 EDT
References: <219@ausmelb.OZ> <491@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <4135@teddy.UUCP>
Reply-To: dricej@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson)
Organization: Data Resources/McGraw-Hill, Lexington, MA
Lines: 35
Keywords: vi/ex commands in a text file

In article <4135@teddy.UUCP> jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) writes:
>(Earlier, someone else had written:)
>>What you do is you put lines containing things like
>>	vi: commands

>Well, both SUN UN*X and DEC ULTRIX disable this (mis)feature in their
>binary distributions.  Just as well, in my opinion, since this can cause
>unexpected behavior when editing a file.

Thank you.

>Perhaps this behavior should be settable in the .exrc (or EXRC), with the
>default OFF.

It definitely should.

It seems that computers in Lexington, Mass, (as well as other Lexingtons)
frequently get named with a name ending in 'lex'.
I work on drilex, which is the Lexington machine of Data Resources;
it used to talk to rclex, which was the Lexington office of Ridge
Computers.

I frequently would get complaints from my news partners, as their sys
files came up with lines like:

drilex:world,...

and 'vi' tried to execute the newsgroup names and distributions.  (I didn't
have any problem; my vi's too old.)

So I definitely vote for making this 'feature' optional.
-- 
Craig Jackson
UUCP: {harvard!axiom,linus!axiom,ll-xn}!drilex!dricej
BIX:  cjackson