Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpda!hpcupt1!pdg From: pdg@hpcupt1.HP.COM (Paul Gootherts) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Grow your own VI (Re: AVI editor) Message-ID: <6080005@hpcupt1.HP.COM> Date: 19 Aug 88 17:52:22 GMT Article-I.D.: hpcupt1.6080005 References: <2424@sugar.uu.net> Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino Lines: 21 > What is *really* gross (IMHO) is that the way the same program > funtions as three different ones (according to our local Unix > expert) is by checking to see argv[0] to see what name the user > invoked the program as. Then the program goes into one of its > modes: vi mode, ex mode, view mode, etc. Pretty sneaky. When I first heard this, I assumed vi compared argv[0] against strings like "vi", "ex", "view", and the like. I was wrong. It's worse. The version I saw set the mode flags based on characters appearing anywhere in the name. Thus, if the name contains a 'w', readonly mode is assumed. If a 'd' appears, it assumes you ran "edit", and if a 'v' appears, it assumes visual mode. It should be possible to get some weird combinations by making some other links to the executable, for example, "dvw".... __________________ Paul Gootherts Hewlett Packard Co hplabs!hpda!pdg