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From: rcodi@yabbie.rmit.oz (Ian Donaldson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: Weird vi bug
Message-ID: <652@yabbie.rmit.oz>
Date: Wed, 25-Nov-87 20:37:25 EST
Article-I.D.: yabbie.652
Posted: Wed Nov 25 20:37:25 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Nov-87 20:55:10 EST
References: <130@caldwr.caldwr.gov>
Organization: RMIT Comm & Elec Eng, Melbourne, Australia.
Lines: 25

in article <130@caldwr.caldwr.gov>, ack@caldwr.caldwr.gov (David Ackerman) says:
> will give you "Missing regular expression for global". I have never seen this
> type of behavior in any of the versions of vi I have used before. Has anyone
> else ever experienced this, or is it just us?
> 
> BTW, we are running SR 9.5.

Its standard in 4.2 vi (ex3.7) too, and not specific to the apollo version.  
Probably many others as well.  What is supposed to happen is the string:

	ex:
or
	vi:

be recognized, at the start of the file, but due to the way its coded in ex, 
it only checks that the first letter be 'e' or 'v' and the 2nd letter be 'x' 
or 'i', but doesn't check the combinations, so that:

	ei:
and
	vx:

are also triggers for the startup command string.

Ian D