bug in vi with :ab

[Brant Cheikes]

Problem: Abbreviations are expanded at all levels of vi.
This has been reproduced in both System V vi and BSD vi
(SVR2 and 4.3BSD respectively).

Reproduce:  Run vi, and set an abbreviation, say :ab foo FooBaz.
Now insert some text, anytime you type "foo", it will be replaced
by "FooBaz".  This is fine.  However, you can no longer ever search
for the string "foo", nor edit a file called "foo"--in all cases,
"foo" is expanded first to FooBaz.

SO, is this a bug?  Is there some way to search for abbreviation
strings?  If a bug, is there a fix?  It seems to me that abbreviations
should ONLY be expanded while in input mode.
--
Brant Cheikes
Department of Computer and Information Science
ARPA: brant at linc.cis.upenn.edu, UUCP: {bpa,drexel}!manta!brant