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Would it be better to just have VIM without the graphical decorations? --Midnightcomm 19:39, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Am I the only person who had a very strong urge to type :q! when I saw that screen of ~ characters? Kevphenry (talk) 06:45, 9 October 2008 (UTC) KevPHenry
The image and description (at least from version 18:43, 7 January 2007 through version 13:26, 20 October 2009 - current at the time of this writing)
are inconsistent. It would appear the image is from nvi (or vi on BSD), not vim. I intend to correct the description. The last line:
/tmp/vi.FuxNv18297: new file: line 1
is most telling, but the 2nd through next-to-last lines also having just ~ in leftmost column and nothing else is also rather indicative.
This matches the behavior one would get invoking nvi (or vi on a BSD system, which is nvi) with no arguments and under default conditions (e.g.
TMPDIR not set in the environment, and nothing configured via initialization files (e.g. ~/.exrc) to change behavior). E.g. invoking nvi thusly,
I get a last line of:
/tmp/vi.MSpdbe: new file: line 1
or:
/tmp/vi.UP0016: new file: line 1
(the part after /tmp/vi. is randomly generated name portion of temporary file).
vim, on the other hand, gives quite different behavior,
e.g. with no arguments, it give additional help text on the screen, and the last line is empty,
giving it a file argument - e.g. even explicitly giving file argument of: /tmp/vi.FuxNv18297
in that case vim gives a last (status) line of:
"/tmp/vi.FuxNv18297" [New File]
if the file doesn't already exist, or line similar to:
"/tmp/vi.FuxNv18297" 0L, 0C
if the file already exists. In no case with vim does the last (status) line look like:
/tmp/vi.FuxNv18297: new file: line 1
It's also quite possible that, perhaps due to update-alternatives(8) settings, that the vi command on Ubuntu on system that
was presumably used to originally generate and capture and describe the image, in fact invoked nvi, but person writing it mistakenly believed it was
invoking vim.
Also, in the image, it's unlikely to be classic UNIX vi(1), as that wouldn't show such a temporary file generated by vi(1) itself as part of the
status line. Thus it seems most likely the image was generated by use of the nvi program (which would also be vi on BSD systems, and may be
invoked as vi on, e.g., Ubuntu and Debian systems, if update-alternatives(8) is configured to invoke nvi for vi, rather than vim).
Michael.Paoli (talk) 06:06, 14 June 2010 (UTC) (who's been using UNIX and vi for over 25 years, and nvi and vim for more than 10 years)
