vim -w or -W records all the keystrokes entered in Vim. If running on an xterm or another terminal that supports requesting the terminal version, vim will do so, and process the resulting version response to set a few options. In the process of doing so, it ends up recording three extra bytes at the beginning of the script file:
/tmp$ vim -u /dev/null -N -W foo /tmp$ hd foo 00000000 80 fd 35 5a 5a |..5ZZ| 00000005 This affected quite a few people playing on vimgolf.com. After some adventures through vim's source, I think I've tracked down exactly what happens to cause the problem: - Vim asks the terminal for its version string when it starts, in the may_req_termresponse function, by sending the kPRV string from the terminfo record, and then calling vpeekc_nomap. - That reads the response from stdin into typebuf, and eventually ends up in check_termcode, which handles terminal escape sequences. - check_termcode finds the version response, and if it manages to extract an xterm version number, it sets various features based on that version number. - check_termcode then translates the escape sequence into the key_name array as KS_EXTRA and KE_IGNORE, which match the second and third bytes of the escape sequence. - Towards the end of check_termcode (near the comment "Add any modifier codes to our string."), this becomes a three-byte sequence K_SPECIAL KS_EXTRA KE_IGNORE, which matches the three bytes that appear in the script file. - check_termcode then puts this sequence into the typebuf, and doesn't seem to set anything to make vim treat this sequence as something not typed by the user. - Later on, this character gets read, and ends up in vgetorpeek. Near the comment "get a character: 2. from the typeahead buffer", vgetorpeek ends up considering this character a typed character, and feeds it to gotchars, which calls updatescript on each character to write it to the script file. I don't know the correct fix. Possibly something should set tb_maplen to mark the character as the result of a map, or possibly the character shouldn't get re-inserted into typebuf at all. - Josh Triplett -- You received this message from the "vim_dev" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
