Bug in vi or ksh?

boykin at custom.UUCP boykin at custom.UUCP
Fri Feb 6 03:43:46 AEST 1987


In article <2063 at ptsfa.UUCP>, jackb at ptsfa.UUCP (Jack Bailey) writes:
> Let's say that during a session of vi, you have your shell set
> to /bin/ksh (from EXINIT, .exrc, or manual setting).  Let's also
> assume you're editing an existing file.  When you perform
> a shell escape with file name substitution using %, the
> program you call says the file does not exist.
> -- 
> J.J.Bailey

The problem is that UNIX VI sets the most significant bit when
the '%' meta-character is expanded.  Csh and sh strip
the data to 7-bit ASCII and hence there is no problem.
Ksh doesn't, hence the lookup fails.

This was one of the things we noticed when we did PC/VI, but
couldn't figure out any good reasons why VI did this.  Among
other reasons why we didn't do this was that DOS's command.com
isn't wild about setting the MSB either.

Joe Boykin
Custom Software Systems
{necntc, frog}!custom!boykin



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