A suggested change for more

jmrubin jmrubin
Thu Jan 28 13:53:03 AEST 1982


prompt, if you're more'ing a file.  It looks for vi in a specific place.
This has two problems.
	(1) If you have a brain-damaged (or hard-copy) terminal,
or your $TERM/$TERMCAP variable isn't set correctly, vi may semi-bomb,
depending on which version of vi you're using.  (If it's a nice
version, it will just go into open mode automatically.)
	(2) If you have a free login which mores a file, you give
it the ability to fork a shell from vi.  (shell escapes tend to die
otherwise--since more looks at your $SHELL variable.)  (Of course,
you can pipe the file into more--which destroys the ability to go
into vi.)

	Suggestion:  (1) more should use your shell with the -c
(or maybe -cf) flag to find vi.  This would also be nice if vi moves,
or if a new version becomes available in a non-standard place.
			(2) Maybe it should use some environmental
varialbe to find which visual editor you like to use--maybe you
like a version of emacs or teco, instead.
			(3) If you're on a bad terminal, it should
use ex, or something similarly non-visual.

				Joel Rubin



More information about the Comp.bugs.2bsd mailing list