Re: terminal weirdness?

["Allen J. Newton" <anewton () ALTURIA FLEET ORG>]

Hi, Blue Boar, you wrote:
> Date:         Thu, 8 Mar 2001 10:22:23 -0800
> Subject:      Re: terminal weirdness?

> Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > This is a feature.  When your terminal software receives an ENQ character, it
> > will send back the name of your terminal (e.g., "vt100" or "xterm"), or
> > whatever else it's been instructed to send back.  Try it (ENQ is ASCII 5).
> >
> > This is also the reason why receiving random binary data on a terminal will
> > often cause the terminal name to be printed many times.
>
> OK, so now can someone tell me why doing a more on binary files
> often leaves me sitting in ed?
>
>                                       BB

Yes.  :-)

If you're using a GNU version of "more" (or "less"), a "v" command will launch
your editor (specified in your EDITOR environment variable) or the default
editor (usually /bin/ed).  So when a \005 (ASCII 5) is printed, it elicits
that "VT200" (or whatever you said) response to STDIN -- and the "V" tells
more to edit the file being viewed.

If you're running Linux, "more" is "less" by default...  ;-)

--
Allen J. Newton  (anewton () alturia fleet org) -- Team *AMIGA*