Shell Programming and Scripting

I am trying to explore HERE Document in UNIX.
Here is the sample script that i am trying to execute:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
filename=sample.txt
vi $filename <<EOF
i

This file was created automatically from
a shell script.

Code:

^[
:wq
EOF

Here is the error i received when i execute above script:

Code:

Vim: Warning: Input is not from a terminal
Vim: Error reading input, exiting...
Vim: preserving files...
Vim: Finished.

Can someone please help me out? I guess Vim is not reading "^[" as escape key<esc>. are there any environment variable setup to be changed so that Vim can interpret "^[" as escape?

Thank You!

There are much better ways to change files from command line/script (eg awk,sed).

But if you insist on using vim, you can try using a vim script file (with the -s option)

Code:

#!/bin/sh
filename=sample.txt
dummy=/tmp/$$vim.script

cat > $dummy <<EOF
iThis file was created automatically from
a shell script.^[:wq
EOF

vim -s $dummy $filename

rm $dummy

Make sure you use <ctrl-V>ESC to insert ^[ into your script when writing in vim.

vi is a visual editor. look at ex (part of vi), or ed. they don't require a terminal.

Chubler_XL and neutronscott: thanks for your input.

Chubler_XL: I tried your code it worked. and my code too worked after i did <Ctrl+V> for ESC. Before i was entering character"^[". Hence it wasn't working.
Thanks again.