Re: terminal weirdness?

[Matt Zimmerman <mdz () CSH RIT EDU>]

On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 09:35:15AM -0700, Allen J. Newton wrote:

> Hi, Blue Boar, you wrote:
> > OK, so now can someone tell me why doing a more on binary files often
> > leaves me sitting in ed?
>
> 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...  ;-)

However, less(1) will (by default) display non-printable characters in
carat-notation (in this case, ^E for ASCII 5).  However, the more(1) that comes
with util-linux also supports the 'v' command to launch an editor.

--
 - mdz