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Annotation of src/usr.bin/vi/FAQ, Revision 1.1

1.1     ! deraadt     1: @(#)FAQ        8.5 (Berkeley) 5/9/96
        !             2:
        !             3: Q: How can I get nvi to display my character set?
        !             4: A: Nvi uses the C library routine isprint(3) to determine if a character
        !             5:    is printable, or should be displayed as an octal or hexadecimal value
        !             6:    on the screen.  Generally, if nvi is displaying printable characters
        !             7:    in octal/hexadecimal forms, your environment is not configured correctly.
        !             8:    Try looking at the man pages that allow you to configure your locale.
        !             9:    For example, to configure an ISO 8859-1 locale under Solaris using csh,
        !            10:    you would do:
        !            11:
        !            12:        setenv LANG C
        !            13:        setenv LC_CTYPE iso_8859_1
        !            14:
        !            15:    Other LC_CTYPE systems/values that I'm told work:
        !            16:
        !            17:    System      Value
        !            18:    ======      =====
        !            19:    FreeBSD     lt_LN.ISO_8859-1
        !            20:    HP-UX  9.X  american.iso88591
        !            21:    HP-UX 10.X  en_US.iso88591
        !            22:    SunOS  4.X  iso_8859_1
        !            23:    SunOS  5.X  iso_8859_1
        !            24:
        !            25: Q: My map won't work!
        !            26: A: One thing that you should immediately check if a vi map doesn't work
        !            27:    is if depends on the final cursor position after a P or p command.
        !            28:    Historic vi's were inconsistent as to the final position of the cursor,
        !            29:    and, to make matter worse, the final cursor position also depended on
        !            30:    whether the put text came from a named or unnamed buffer!  Nvi follows
        !            31:    the POSIX 1003.2 standard on this one, and makes this consistent, always
        !            32:    placing the cursor on the first character.
        !            33:
        !            34: Q: I'm using ksh or csh as my vi edit option shell value, and file
        !            35:    expansions don't work right!
        !            36: A: The problem may be in your ksh or csh startup files, e.g., .cshrc.  Vi
        !            37:    executes the shell to do name expansion, and the shell generally reads
        !            38:    its startup files.  If the startup files are not correctly configured
        !            39:    for non-interactive use, e.g., they always echo a prompt to the screen,
        !            40:    vi will be unable to parse the output and things will not work
        !            41:    correctly.
        !            42:
        !            43: Q: How does the iclower edit option differ from the ignorecase (i.e. ic)
        !            44:    edit option?
        !            45: A: The difference is that the ignorecase edit option always ignores the
        !            46:    case of letters in the Regular Expression (RE), and the iclower edit
        !            47:    option only ignores the case if there are no upper-case letters in the
        !            48:    RE.  If any upper-case letters appear in the Regular Expression, then
        !            49:    it will be treated case-sensitively, as if the ignorecase edit option
        !            50:    was not set.
        !            51:
        !            52: Q: When I edit binary files, nvi appends a <newline> to the last line!
        !            53: A: This is historic practice for vi, and further, it's required by the
        !            54:    POSIX 1003.2 standard.  My intent is to provide a command line and/or
        !            55:    edit option to turn this behavior off when I switch to version 2.0 of
        !            56:    the Berkeley DB package.
        !            57:
        !            58: Q: My cursor keys don't work when I'm in text input mode!
        !            59: A: A common problem over slow links is that the set of characters sent by
        !            60:    the cursor keys don't arrive close enough together for vi to understand
        !            61:    that they are a single keystroke, and not separate keystrokes.  Try
        !            62:    increasing the value of the escapetime edit option, which will cause
        !            63:    vi to wait longer before deciding that the <escape> character that
        !            64:    starts cursor key sequences doesn't have any characters following it.
        !            65:
        !            66: Q: When I edit some files, nvi seems to hang forever, and I have to kill it.
        !            67: A: Nvi uses flock(2) and fcntl(2) to do file locking.  When it attempts to
        !            68:    acquired a lock for a file on an NFS mounted filesystem, it can hang
        !            69:    for a very long (perhaps infinite) period of time.  Turning off the
        !            70:    "lock" edit option will keep nvi from attempting to acquire any locks
        !            71:    on the files you edit.