Jeff Woods wrote:

> Actually, that makes me think this might be a redirected stderr from
> "man".  What happens (for donna and perhaps for M.Bixby/et-al on Invent3K)
> if "man" is done for something that doesn't exist?  Say "man XYZZY"?  Does
> that create a file with "NoFilename" in it?

basically, yes.  the 'vi___.aaa' file contains the name of the nonexistant file i
requested (in a different session) thru vi.  also, the owner of this file matches
my other logon (makes sense) as does the time stamp.  good catch! :-)

> I suspect that "man" might be using "view" (which is a read-only) mode of
> "vi" as the pager instead of "more" (which I think is the default) or
> "less" (which I think is the only rational choice :).

would that explain why 'man' erases 'n' lines (maybe 20-some?) on the screen.  (and
it's rather annoying too.)

> What is the environment variable "PAGER" set to, donna?  Try (without a "$"
> before "PAGER"):
>
> printenv PAGER

ummm, nothing.  actually it tells me it doesn't know what 'printenv' is.  an 'echo
$PAGER' comes back blank.  there's no reference to pager in /etc/profile or
/etc/profile.local (no .profile).

> It wouldn't surprise me if "man" recognizes (an)other environment
> variable(s) to indicate what to use to paginate (scroll) through the man
> output when directed to a TTY device.  Do a "man man" to find out.

man man (sounds familiar :-)

<snippage>
     If output is to the terminal, then man invokes a pager command to
     filter and display the manual pages.  If MANPAGER is defined, it is
     used.  If not, then if PAGER is defined, it is used; otherwise, man
     defaults to using the command:

        more -A -s

ok...so what's 'more -A -s'....

<snippage>

     -A   causes the display of all characters, including unprintable ones.
          Normally unprintable characters are displayed in a printable
          format.  Further, ANSI escape sequences for display modes are
          processed.  This option cannot be used with -u.
...
     -s   replaces consecutive empty lines with a single empty line.
...
     MPE/iX NOTES
     The currrent MPE/iX implementation of more converts non-byte stream
     files to byte steam files before displaying them. File characteristics
     like file code, record size, and so forth are not preserved by this
     conversion.  The output of more is written as a byte stream file.

(that's the only clue i noticed about why files might be created/leftover.  i would
have thought 'more' treated the man database file as bytestream....)           - d

--
Donna Garverick     Sr. System Programmer
925-210-6631        [log in to unmask]

"Unix _is_ user friendly.
It's just very selective about who its friends are.
And sometimes even best friends have fights."

>>>MY opinions, not Longs Drug Stores'<<<

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