[sf-lug] FWIW and :r! dig -t ns sf-lug.com
rick at linuxmafia.com
Wed Oct 24 19:00:55 PDT 2007
Quoting Alex Kleider (a_kleider at yahoo.com):
> for what does
"For What[ever] It's Worth".
> what is ment by
Meaningful to anyone who knows the "vi" editor. ;-> (I was implying
that I was writing that message in vi, which was indeed the case.)
The ":" charcter in this context means "I'm telling the copy of vi in
which I'm composing this message to run a command."
The "r" character in this context means "The particular command I'm
telling vi to carry out is to read a file into the current vi edit buffer."
The "!" character in this context means "...and the particular file to
be read into the current vi edit buffer is a command whose output is
to be considered to _be_ that file."
So, when I include in a message
:r! dig -t ns sf-lug.com
...and follow that with some command output, I mean "here on the
following line is the parsed-into-my-message output of performing the
command string "dig -t ns sf-lug.com".
As an example, here's the result of running the vi command ":r! date":
Wed Oct 24 18:46:52 PDT 2007
Sometimes, people also insert pseudo-commands (as if they'd not been
processed) for humourous effect, e.g., the ctrl-W command that in many
editors means "delete preceding word". Earlier today, in fact, I wrote:
Article goes on to detail the misleading, labyrinthine, and extremely
cheeky Terms of Service -- which, author Larry Seltzer points out, signs
over to Tagged, Inc. the right to harvest e-mail addresses from the
victim^Wcustomer's address book and use it for any purpose.
> Rick, you used the former in answer to some of my queries and it made
> me curious since the context was such that I would have expected FYI.
> as I type this it has suddenly dawned on me that it must be
> for what it's worth....
There ya go.
Can you guess about "IMVAO"? ;->
(I'm teasing. That's not a serious question.)
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