phil@utecfa.UUCP (Philip Poulos) (04/14/84)
I finally broke down and decided to give vi a try. But to my surprise I could not edit this message. If you have the same 4.2 version of ex/vi we have then you won't be able to either. Save this message in a file somewhere and try to vi it. Are we the only ones to get this "feature" ? NOTE: ed, 4.1 vi both work. vi:q!: Phil (I always use ed) Poulos
sylvan@boulder.UUCP (Sylvan Ruud) (04/16/84)
I agree about this "feature". As a matter of fact, we have a user name
of "evi" - take a look at the syntax of a password file.... it just so
happened that she was within the top 5 lines of the file, so whenever
someone did a 'vipw', we got the message 'JJ: Not an editor command'.
Lemme see, if her password just happened to get encrypted as evi:1,$d|wq
would that blow away the password file????
fun times.
sylvan ruud
{ucbvax!hplabs | allegra!nbires | decvax!kpno | harpo!seismo | ihnp4!kpno}
!hao!boulder!sylvan
for those of you who have not run into this problem yet, there is an extension
to vi/ex so that if there is a character sequence of 'vi:' or 'ex:' in the
first or last 5 lines of a file, these editors will try to execute what it
thinks are commands immediately following the :.
This is "documented" in the 4.2 release - see /usr/src/ucb/ex/ex.newswapd@houxj.UUCP (Bill Dietrich) (04/17/84)
For what it's worth, we run USG 5.0 on a VAX, our VI says version 3.7, and it has this behavior on weird strings that start with 'vi' and then a ':'. Does this mean that it is scanning the input files every time one is opened ? Seems weird and dangerous. Bill Dietrich houxj!wapd
lorne@uokvax.UUCP (04/18/84)
#R:utecfa:-13600:uokvax:6200024:000:344 uokvax!lorne Apr 18 00:45:00 1984 Nope you aren't the only one. I can't believe it, but our vi did it too. We run vi 3.7 on a vax 780 running 4.1c bsd. However, there is a way to edit the file with vi, but I certainly don't like the method one has to use to do it. Is this feature/(bug?) documented somewhere? Lorne Wilson ctvax!uokvax!lorne University of Oklahoma
allan@qtlon.UUCP (04/19/84)
<no, no, no. Please don't eat me>
not only does a line
vi:q!:
screw up vi and ex but so do the following. Try makeing a file with one
of the following in and see what happens;
vi:!echo hello:
ex:!echo hello:
vx:!echo hello:
ei:!echo hello:
xxxxxxxxxxxei:!echo hello:hdscbshbcjshadcsd
the rule is (for some reason) if you try to edit a file with vi or ex, and
one of the lines is of the following format
string[ev][xi]:cmd:string
then cmd with be executed as an ex command.
--
UUCP: {decvax,cbosgd,vax135}!qusavx!qtlon!allan
ukc!qtlon!allan
Phone: +44 1 637 7061jc@inmet.UUCP (04/21/84)
#R:utecfa:-13600:inmet:10300014:000:471 inmet!jc Apr 19 14:14:00 1984 > > I finally broke down and decided to give vi a try. But to my > surprise I could not edit this message. If you have the same 4.2 version > of ex/vi we have then you won't be able to either. > Save this message in a file somewhere and try to vi it. > > Are we the only ones to get this "feature" ? > > NOTE: ed, 4.1 vi both work. It seems to work ok here. I don't know what version of vi this is. vi:q!: [What's this?] John Chambers [inmet!jc] ----------