On Mon, Jan 07, 2002 at 04:43:47PM +0100, martin f krafft wrote: > can anyone please explain this to me? > > seamus:/usr/local/share/phpgw# find . -name Root | xargs vi > 221 files to edit > Vim: Warning: Input is not from a terminal
In this case, the shell starts 'xargs' with stdin from the stdout of 'find'. When 'xargs' starts 'vi', it has no other concept of stdin except that pipe, so that is what vi sees. > seamus:/usr/local/share/phpgw# vi `find . -name Root` > 221 files to edit Here, the output from 'find ...' is converted into a list of file names that are then given to 'vi'. Since it it the shell that is starting 'vi', stdin is from the terminal. HTH Steve Williams
