On Sat, Apr 29, 2006 at 02:42:36AM -0400, cga2000 wrote:
> Are there any peculiarities associated with the '-' dash character in
> vim?
>
> I was experimenting with the '.' repeat command and I typed the
> following:
>
> +--------------------+--------------------------------------------+
> ! ! !
>
> followed by an <esc> and a '.'
>
> .. vaguely hoping to obtain this:
>
>
> +--------------------+--------------------------------------------+
> ! ! !
> +--------------------+--------------------------------------------+
> ! ! !
>
> .. in order to eventually create a table of two columns and n rows with
> minimal effort/typing.
>
> Instead I got this:
>
> +--------------------+-------------------------------------------+
> ! !
> +--------------------+-------------------------------------------+
> !¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬!¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬!!
>
> iow the spaces on the second line of what I originally entered are
> replaced by the 'NOT' character - not present on the US keyboard.
>
> also the last of my exclamation points appears to have been removed
> from what I originally typed and now four of them appear on the second
> of the two lines added by the '.' command
>
> naturally, I could use shift-V followed by a number of 'yp's to obtain
> what I am looking for but I was just curious where this NOT ('¬' - 0xac)
> character comes into the picture - and whether there is more to it
> than the above triviality.
>
> Thanks.
>
> cga
The part about the "removed" ! and the doubled one at the end is
probably because you entered Insert mode with "i" (insert) and ended
with <Esc> after typing the last ! (before going to a new line). Try
the same experiment with an extra <CR> before leaving Insert mode.
Turning spaces into 'NOT' characters looks like a bug. It is
reminiscent of some problems I saw in earlier snapshots of vim 7.0, but
I cannot reproduce it with vim 7.0f. What version are you using.
HTH --Benji Fisher
