Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!srs!matt
From: matt@srs.UUCP (Matt Goheen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: How can you put a `|' in a vi map?
Message-ID: <521@srs.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jan 88 18:50:30 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: S.R. Systems, Rochester NY
Lines: 22

Try as I may, I can't seem to find a way to put a pipe symbol (`|') into
a vi (ex) map.  For example, in vi try:

:map q i|^[

Where '^[' is entered via ^V then the escape key.  Vi says something
like "Unknown command character '^['".  You can try escaping the `|'
with a backslash and get different but equally useless results.  Seems
that I've tried everything (doubling the `|', backslash, etc.).

The problem is that vi thinks the `|' is a command separator no matter what
you do.  I'm trying to write a map that sends a block of text to a series
of pipelined commands (e.g.  'sed "s/^.\* //" | fmt | sed "s/^/\*\* /"'
in a map along with a few other vi commands to fix it up).  I have solved
the problem using a shell script (or mapping three separate shell escapes
into the map command -- ugghh).  It just seems that there MUST be a way
to do this the "right" way...
-- 
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- UUCP:	{allegra,rutgers,ames}!rochester!srs!matt	Matt Goheen 	-
- "Make you love to hate, and hate to love..."		S.R. Systems	-
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