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From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: vi abbreviation for :w :n ?
Summary: about aw
Message-ID: <9652@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 24 Sep 89 07:33:12 GMT
References: <4728@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM> <26465@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> 
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 18

In article  bitbug@lonewolf.sun.com (James Buster) writes:

>There is a much better way. Set autowrite (the "aw" variable) in your
>EXINIT environment variable or .exrc. This will cause the file to be
>automatically written when the :n command is given. If you have job
>control, it will also cause your file to be written automatically
>when ^Z is typed. If you use the ^^ command (that's control-caret),
>the file will also be written when going to the alternate file.

Keep in mind that aw also causes a the file to be automatically written
when you do a shell escape.  I have been bitten by this a few times when
I realized during an editing session that I had made substantial changes
and should have made a backup copy of the original.  No problem, just:
:!cp % %.O
except that with autowrite enabled, the current buffer is written out
before the shell escape, so goodbye original file...

Les Mikesell