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From: ado@elsie.UUCP (Arthur David Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Undocumented vi feature
Message-ID: <7455@elsie.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 27-Jun-87 14:07:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: elsie.7455
Posted: Sat Jun 27 14:07:08 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Jun-87 01:37:50 EDT
References: <219@ausmelb.OZ> <756@custom.UUCP> <2628@mtgzy.UUCP> <6017@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: NIH-LEC, Bethesda, MD
Lines: 14
Keywords: vi/ex commands in a text file
Summary: .exrc

> > My personal opinion is that since vi has no idea what the file it's editting
> > *should* look like, it not try to 'guess' (in effect) what are commands and
> > what is data.

> Exactly right.  A general text editor should be able to edit GENERAL text.

Before the "vi:" line recognition stuff was added to the editor by Berkeley,
we set up our 4.1BSD system so that when you edited a file named, for
example, "whatever", the editor looked for a file named "whatever.exrc" and,
if it found it, executed the commands in that file.  Doing it this way meant
that the file being edited could contain "general" text.
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