We Got Mail: Vi-va la Fred!
HP Pro Columnist Fred Mallet has received many kudos for his January and February 2000 columns about using vi. Here are some of the responses:
Fred:
Just a quick note to let you know how useful I’ve found your recent series of articles on find and vi. It seems like each article is filled with juicy tidbits that you just can’t find anywhere else. I hope this plea for "more" results in more! Thanks!
Alan Goldberg
***
Fred:
I enjoy your HP-UX Admin Man columns in HP Professional magazine. However, in the article in the February issue, I am confused by the commands that are printed as "vi/..." Where are such commands entered?
As far as more columns on vi, my request is YES, PLEASE.
Richard Lathom, System Administrator
EDS/GM-Lordstown, Warren, Ohio
Richard:
I can understand your confusion. I looked in the issue, and found that a glitch had appeared somewhere along the line between writing and printing. Might have been bitten by a translator program somewhere, but it appears that anywhere I had written this:
:g
it somehow got changed to:
vi
…Hmmmmm …At any rate, here is the original version of that section:
The global (:g) command accepts a pattern, and command as arguments. The format for the command is:
:g/pattern/[commands]
Note that the [ ]s mean that the commands are optional. Global will perform the command supplied (or print as a default, if none is given) against all lines that contain a match for the supplied pattern. For example, both of these commands do the same thing:
:g/^#/
:g/^#/p
This error was consistently wrong for the first two columns in the magazine. Sorry about that.
Fred Mallett
***
Fred:
This is in response to your last paragraph about saving vi for a future column, unless you get plenty of e-mail.
Well, I am attempting to help give you plenty of e-mail. I would like you to continue writing about vi right away, instead of saving them. I find these types of articles very informative, and they have helped me become a more powerful vi user.
Richard Henriques