vi doesn't :preserve so well ...

[John F. Haugh II]

I've been working on a VI bug on another system and noticed that
on 2.2.3 that :preserve always reports an error.  Also, if I
kill the VI command with a SIGHUP, VI spews out the same error
message, "Buffer Format Error".  Inside of VI it also says
"Preserve Failed!".

Is this fixed in some newer version?

I recreated this by editing a new file named "foo", with just
one line "this is a test.", exited, then re-edited it again.
I then added one more line "this is a new line.", typed ":preserve"
and it barfs.  Escaping to the shell and sending VI a SIGHUP will
have similiar results (and screw up your terminal)

I thought this might be due to a small buffer (Ex* file == 4096)
not being handled exactly right, but trying :preserve just now on
this file (Ex* file == 8192).  I suppose I could keep typing and
see if it works with really large files, but that is probably a
waste of time ;-).
-- 
John F. Haugh II                             UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh
Ma Bell: (512) 832-8832                           Domain: jfh at rpp386.cactus.org