VI(1) vs. the world

[Chris Torek]

>>>... I really like to be able to say ... "40a -<ESC>" to be able
>>>to make an 80 column dashed line.

>In article <3772 at umcp-cs.UUCP> I wrote:
>>Vi has a major advantage over Emacs here.

In article <523 at epimass.UUCP> jbuck at epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) replies:
>I'm surprised at you, Chris.  An old Emacs hand like you should know
>that ESC 8 0 - makes an 80 column dashed line, in four keystrokes
>instead of the five that vi requires.  I use this all the time.  In
>Emacs everything is a command, so in a sense you're always in command
>mode, rather than always being in insert mode.  '-' is just the
>"insert a -" command.

Indeed, ESC 8 0 - inserts eighty `-' characters.  That was not what
the original poster (>>>) wanted: 4, 0, a, SPACE, -, ESC, inserts
40 pairs of ` -' characters:

	----------------------------------------
vs.	 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Incidentally, `-' is not an `insert a ``-'' command', since it has
to do the appropriate magic to construct negative arguments if
typed immediately after ESC.  This cannot always be ignored: e.g.,
^U k inserts four `k's, but ^U - inserts nothing, instead setting
the prefix argument to -4.  ^U 4 -, however, inserts four `-'
characters.  The exact details may vary according to your Emacs
variety.

(Nice try, Joe.  I *do* make mistakes, but this was not one.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 1516)
UUCP:	seismo!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet:	chris at umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu