[sf-lug] FWIW and :r! dig -t ns sf-lug.com

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Alex Kleider (a_kleider at yahoo.com):

> for what does 
> FWIW
> stand

"For What[ever] It's Worth".

> and 
> what is ment by
> :r!
> ????

Meaningful to anyone who knows the "vi" editor.  ;->  (I was implying
that I was writing that message in vi, which was indeed the case.)

The ":" charcter in this context means "I'm telling the copy of vi in
which I'm composing this message to run a command."

The "r" character in this context means "The particular command I'm
telling vi to carry out is to read a file into the current vi edit buffer."

The "!" character in this context means "...and the particular file to 
be read into the current vi edit buffer is a command whose output is 
to be considered to _be_ that file."

So, when I include in a message

:r! dig -t ns sf-lug.com

...and follow that with some command output, I mean "here on the
following line is the parsed-into-my-message output of performing the 
command string "dig -t ns sf-lug.com".

As an example, here's the result of running the vi command ":r! date":
Wed Oct 24 18:46:52 PDT 2007

Sometimes, people also insert pseudo-commands (as if they'd not been
processed) for humourous effect, e.g., the ctrl-W command that in many
editors means "delete preceding word".  Earlier today, in fact, I wrote:

  Article goes on to detail the misleading, labyrinthine, and extremely
  cheeky Terms of Service -- which, author Larry Seltzer points out, signs
  over to Tagged, Inc. the right to harvest e-mail addresses from the
  victim^Wcustomer's address book and use it for any purpose.


> Rick, you used the former in answer to some of my queries and it made
> me curious since the context was such that I would have expected FYI.
> ..................
> as I type this it has suddenly dawned on me that it must be
> for what it's worth....

There ya go.

Can you guess about "IMVAO"?  ;->

(I'm teasing.  That's not a serious question.)