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From: srini@ut-sally.UUCP (Srinivasan Sundararajan)
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: vi '_' command
Message-ID: <1484@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 18-Mar-84 02:13:19 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.1484
Posted: Sun Mar 18 02:13:19 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Mar-84 06:55:59 EST
References: <1093@cwruecmp.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 27

:ab in vi
=========

You're right there - it is meant for abbreviations.
For instance :

( in command mode ), the command -

	:ab xy xylophone

makes vi automatically expand -

	xy   (to)   xylophone

as you are typing text. It's not necessary for the "ab"-ed form to be the first
few letters of the expanded form. Even this is okay -

	:ab q xylophone

But as you type in the abbreviation, leave a blank after it so that vi will 
know that it needs to expand. This makes it possible to type in a word like

	quiet   

without having it suddenly expanded to -

	xylophoneuiet   !!