Hi,

On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 8:50 AM Andy Bradford <
amb-sendok-1776617303.kmgochkljgafgaiclkij@bradfords.org> wrote:

> Thus said Walter Alejandro Iglesias on Wed, 18 Feb 2026 10:47:28 +0100:
>
> > However, who  really paid attention to  all what my diff  does, surely
> > noticed that I intentionally left the 'P' command untouched.
>
> Yes, I  saw that, and  while I do  use 'P' when I  want the lines  to be
> inserted before  the current line,  I don't see  why I should  change to
> using 'P' all the time just to simulate an existing behavior of 'p' that
> I currently get for free.
>
> How is  this any different  from me suggesting  that you can  avoid your
> hypothetical "multiple 'p'  in a row problem" by just  using 'j' to move
> the cursor to  the end of your  insert so that the  cursor is positioned
> where you want it?
>
> For example, to  avoid your hypothetical problem, and  assuming you want
> to yank 3 lines and paste them multiple times in a row, you could do:
>
> 3yy 2jp 2jp 2jp 2jp 2jp 2jp, etc...
>

Or in this case, since you are pasting the same lines over and over, can
avoid the 2j part and use P.


For what it's worth, and I am not sure if my opinion counts all that much
here, I do agree with Andy Bradford.

When I paste something using the p command, I usually intend to edit the
lines. Therefore leaving the cursor at the current location is what I
expect.


I cannot remember  any time that I  ever had to do this  because of this
> perceived "flaw"  in vi(1), but there you have it.
>
> While  I  appreciate  your  desire  to contribute  code,  I'm  just  not
> convinced that the efforts are  worth the fallout, especially since it's
> not really  proven that this is  a bug in behavior---I  would definitely
> have  to  relearn  some  old  habits  and for  what?  Simply  to  do  it
> differently? Also, I  checked implementations on FreeBSD,  AIX and HP-UX
> and vi(1)'s behavior is consistent with those.
>
> If I wanted  a "modern" or "different"  vi, I would use vim,  but so far
> the feature  set in vi(1)  is sufficient for  my needs and  I'm actually
> discovering that vi(1) can  do more than I even realized  the more I use
> it. Case  in point is  the 't'  command which in  all these years  I had
> never had occasion to use until recently.


This is also true with my experience with base vi. I keep reading about
features which I wasn't aware while reading these discussion threads.

Cheers,
--patrick



>


> Thanks for your discussion,
>
> Andy
>
>