[alt.sys.sun] Vi and modeline interaction on Sun 4/330

dwm@fibercom.COM (David W. Minnich) (07/19/90)

We recently got a Sun 4/330 at our site, and I've been noticing some strange
behavior in vi.  In my .exrc I set the modeline option to vi.  This allows
me to set file-specific defaults in vi by including a modeline at the bottom
of the file.  On our other systems this works fine.  On the 4/330, if a 
modeline is present in the file, then vi always thinks I've modified the file
whether I have or not.  (e.g. if I type "vi <filename>" followed immediately
by ":q", vi complains about "No write since last change").  The contents of the
modeline command appear to make no difference; everything I tried behaved the
same way.  We are running SunOS 4.1 on this machine.  Does anyone know what's
going on, and how to fix it?

As always, email to me and I'll summarize if warranted.
-- 
David W. Minnich               INTERNET: dwm@fibercom.com
FiberCom, Inc.                 UUCP: ...!uunet!fibercom!dwm   
P.O. Box 11966                 PHONE: (703) 342-6700, (800) 423-1183 ext. 347
Roanoke, VA  24022-1966        FAX: (703) 342-5961

gert@fwi.uva.nl (Gert Poletiek) (07/20/90)

dwm@fibercom.COM (David W. Minnich) writes:

>We recently got a Sun 4/330 at our site, and I've been noticing some strange
>behavior in vi.  In my .exrc I set the modeline option to vi.  This allows
>me to set file-specific defaults in vi by including a modeline at the bottom
>of the file.  On our other systems this works fine.  On the 4/330, if a 
>modeline is present in the file, then vi always thinks I've modified the file
>whether I have or not.  (e.g. if I type "vi <filename>" followed immediately
>by ":q", vi complains about "No write since last change").  The contents of the
>modeline command appear to make no difference; everything I tried behaved the
>same way.  We are running SunOS 4.1 on this machine.  Does anyone know what's
>going on, and how to fix it?

>As always, email to me and I'll summarize if warranted.
>-- 

You're running SunOS 4.1 which is becoming more and more System V comaptible.
One of the things that are changed is that vi now comes from the SVR4 
distribution and not from de BSD part of SunOS. SVR4 vi does not
know the modeline feature.

You're out of luck...or get the BSD sources and compile them for the sun.


Gert Poletiek  Dept. of Math. and Computing Science, University of Amsterdam,
               Kruislaan 409, NL-1098 SJ  Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Internet:      gert@fwi.uva.nl                   uucp:          gert@uva.uucp
bitnet:        gert%fwi.uva.nl@mcvax.bitnet

--
Gert Poletiek  Dept. of Math. and Computing Science, University of Amsterdam,
               Kruislaan 409, NL-1098 SJ  Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Internet:      gert@fwi.uva.nl                   uucp:          gert@uva.uucp
bitnet:        gert%fwi.uva.nl@mcvax.bitnet