A quick check confirms that '|' also works as a command separator in exrc, so it's not clear to me if there is an actual bug or if you are fighting against a poorly documented feature.
Hi, this is some kind of feature of nvi. You can take a look at the sources. Apart of the traditional command separator, you can use it in some other contexts, making life easiest. The part of the code that make that possible is somewhat, let's say _funny_. For example, you can make a map like this: map =c yEo^[p:.,.! tr -d '\n' | wc -m^M to count the following word, because after the !, vi will treat '|' like part of the shell command. But if you put that in exrc, it will treat the '|' like a command separator. The magic is in common/seq.c, there I saw that when constructing the sequence from input, it inserts before a CH_LITERAL (0x16). Indeed you can use Control-X to insert 0x16 before '|' in exrc, and the map will work. If you mind correctness you have several choices: One is to make the loading of exrc behave like the typed commands (that is what the patch does). another is to add a comment in the man page about inserting 0x16 before '|' in exrc when you don't want to use it like a command separator (I really don't like this option). Well, another solution could be to use Control-V to insert the pair 0x16| when used before |, and document the different behavior when loading a configuration file, or better, make that the common behavior typing commands and loading them. Of course the more sensible aproach to me is just to use another character for command separation, but that would be a big change for this venerable companion... Or maybe I'm just missing something and the best option is just to ignore me. Regards, adr
