[Fwd: Question]

[Bill Vermillion]

In the last exciting episode of the filePro saga, 
Fairlight was heard to say:" 
if: Tue, Aug 03 00:00  
then: nm = Fairlight 
if:
then: show nm < "said:"  
Fairlight said: 

> Four score and seven years--eh, screw that!
> At about Mon, Aug 02, 2004 at 11:37:13PM -0400,
> Bill Vermillion blabbed on about:

> > I've never had that.  Are you sure it's not  you editor.
> > "line too long" sounds suspiciously like an old vi error message.

> I don't know? It only happens when I invoke par, but then the
> only time I use vim's filtering command is -with- par. I'd have
> to look at the sin tax for how par is called, and set up a very
> long line in a file to test it with. Maybe vim has trouble when
> it comes back in?

The only problem I've ever had with par is that sometimes it takes
the last character of one line and puts that at the end of every
line it reformatted with spaces padded after the last wordl so
that I typically see  <spaces) .   for the entire pgh.

> > Test your editor for line length. 

> I may at that. But in my experience, vim is far more tolerant
> than vi. I can edit binaries in vim that I couldn't with
> vi--something I used to have to fire up EMACS to do.

I tried vim and I didn't like how it worked. I don't recall
the specific detail. I used the vi that comes with FreeBSD. In
reality it is 'nvi' - which is based on Bill Joy's original with
many changes/additions. The sources show it has not been changed
since 1996 with the exception two files.

And you can edit binaries with it.   I didn't actually edit any but
they come up just fine.   I suspect you may not have used this
version.  The FAQ has a question that says " When I edit binary
files, vi appends a <newline> to the last line.

The answer says "This is historic practice for vi, and further,
it's required by the POSIX 1003.2 standard. ..."

The only limit to size are memory and that includes swap as I've
sucked in files that are 500MB long.  It options shown
in set all area about 40% larger than others vi's I've used.

If you want to try it http://www.bostic.com/vi and it is a link
to  ftp.sleepycat.com/pub/nvi-1.79.tar.gz.  There are links to
newer versions that require DB 3.1 for use.  But the stock
distribution works well for me.

Bill

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com