UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

The vi[m] command to show the non-default settings currently active, use the command:

Code:

:set

To see the current settings of all of your vi or vim options, use the command:

Code:

:set all

Well, to quote Albert the Alligator from the old comic strip "Pogo", this just gets "curiosor and curiosor". I scp'd a file from another linux server and started editing it, and no longer get the auto indent/auto comment behavior. Not just in that file, but any other - including new ones created from scratch. This is the behavior I want, but I don't know why it started behaving this way. I have not knowingly done anything to change the behavior.

-- Edit -- and even as I posted the above - now I observe that only one files behaves 'properly'. The other 5 still 'auto comment'. If I open (create) a new file, it does not 'auto comment' until I save/exit (:qw). The next time I open it, it exhibits the 'auto comment' behavior.

I'm lost. What is 'auto comment' behavior?

And, just for the fun of it, what is the output from the command:

Code:

set|grep EXINIT

By "auto comment" I'm referring to the behavior described in my first post, wherein if I add a line following a commented line "#" in the first character) the new line is automatically commented. (sorry, it just occurred to me that I was assuming editing of shell scripts, and their comment character.)

The env command returned nothing.

I read some more 'auto detection of file type' and discovered that if I created my own .vimrc file (not relying solely on /etc/vimrc) and added "#!/bin/sh" (or similar) to the top of a file, then it would not behave this way. That explains the difference in behavior between different files on the new server, but not the difference in behavior between the new and old servers. Perhaps if I dug deeper I'd find a difference in the way the two systems were handling file type detection? This is all new to me. I've been using vi (vim) for many years and have never had to give a single thought to how this is configured. Wasn't even aware of it until I hit this issue and started trying to run it to ground.