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From: daved@physiol.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: vi tips- summary number one
Message-ID: <86@physiol.su.oz>
Date: Wed, 30-Sep-87 04:26:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: physiol.86
Posted: Wed Sep 30 04:26:24 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Oct-87 06:49:38 EDT
References: <601@augusta.UUCP> <8524@mimsy.UUCP> <2280@sphinx.uchicago.edu>
Organization: Physiology Dept., Univ. of Sydney, NSW, Australia
Lines: 22
Keywords: vi tips, summary, good stuff, help with vi
Summary: error

In article <2280@sphinx.uchicago.edu>, d757@sphinx.uchicago.edu (Lawrence Lerner) writes:
> Here is a quickie vi ref card for those that don't have acces to one.
> 
> !!    place results of command into file i.e. !!cat it.p will place
>            the list of it.p in your file.
> 
This isn't quite right.  '!' is a command which, in common with 'd', 'c' and
'y' can be followed by a cursor motion command.  The text referred to is
piped to the standard input of the command and the command's output will
replace said text.  In common with 'c', 'd' and 'y',  '!' can be stuttered
in which case the text referred to is the line containing the cursor.

Thus "!!cat it.p" will pipe the current line to cat, which because it
is given an argument will ignore the standard input, and the contents
of the named file (if it exists) will REPLACE the current line.
Thus "!!wc -c" will replace the current line with its character count.

The '!' command is a powerful one.  Its use in reformatting parts of text
files was described in the original tips article.  It can be used similarly
on C source files with a C formatter such as cb.  It's not an effective
alternative to ":r file" unless you are purposely trying to clobber
some text at the same time.