OK, have a look at the program code: to get a parameter passed to a program there are two things necessary. First, the parameters have to be passed (obviously) and second the program has to have some facility to receive parameters. Do you see any such facilities in these programs?

Second: what is necessary for some file to be recognised as executable? For instance, in DOS/Windows it is the extension "*.com" or "*.exe". What is it in UNIX?

vi is just an editor - a program to write text files. A written text file is just that - it doesn't matter using which tool it was written in first place.

Here is a tip for all your future dealings with UNIX: describe your errors exactly! "Doesn't work" can have several doezens of reasons, but an error message of "file not found" nails it down to exactly one. So, instead of telling us "didn't work" show us the command you entered (maybe it was wrongly phrased), the error message you got (maybe it tells us what went wrong) and the return code (use echo $? to get it). This way we can help you a lot better.

That depends on the setup of your system. Usually there is some print queue set up.

I hope this helps.

bakunin