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From: meyering@cs.utexas.edu (Jim Meyering)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.editors
Subject: Re: Oh boy! I guess it's time for the VI REFERENCE again...
Summary: Don't use EX command ":wq"!
Message-ID: <223@ai.cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 11 Mar 89 19:10:00 GMT
References: <12406@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <958@starfish.Convergent.COM> <2386@iscuva.ISCS.COM> <415@corpane.UUCP> <37287@think.UUCP> <2145@solo4.cs.vu.nl>
Followup-To: comp.misc
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 17

In article <2145@solo4.cs.vu.nl> maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath) writes:

 [description of vi commands deleted]

>X:wq			| write the file and quit vi

 Use of this ex command should be avoided (at least in Sun version 3.7).
 The problem is that it attempts to write the buffer and, *regardless
 of the success or failure* of that operation, simply quits.
 So if you get a "disk full" error, chances are you will find that your
 file has been truncated to length zero.

 Since ":x" and "ZZ" are functionally equivalent, but do not exit if
 there is a write error, they should be used instead.
-- 
---
Jim Meyering      meyering@cs.utexas.edu