vi (vim) to read an exrc file other than ~/.exrc

Question

We would like to be able to start vi (or vim) up with an alternative ex initialisation file. By default this is ~/.exrc.

Unfortunately vim(1), which is also brought up for "man ex" on this system, doesn't mention .exrc.

Any workarounds to provide equivalent behaviour would also be appreciated.

Sounds like you are dealing with an ancient version of vi. What version are you using (`vi --version`)? — glts, Jul 17 '12 at 17:08
Just tried to `strace` Vims ex: it does not touch anything like .exrc — fork0, Jul 17 '12 at 18:50
glts: VIM - Vi IMproved 7.2 (2008 Aug 9, compiled Jul 12 2010 12:49:33). — projix, Jul 17 '12 at 19:50
fork0: On my Debian 6.0 system, with ex a symlink to vim.basic, "strace ex 2>&1 | grep exrc" yields a stat and an open on ~/.exrc — projix, Jul 17 '12 at 19:51

Thor · Answer 1 · 2012-07-17T20:02:17.523

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I was expecting the common -u conf_file to work, but that fails here. A workaround is to load no configuration file with -u NONE and then source the one you want with -c:

ex -u NONE -c 'source your_local_exrc'

edited Jul 17 '12 at 20:02

answered Jul 17 '12 at 17:29

Thor

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Thanks Thor. That was enough info to find what I was after, which is "vi -u NONE -S your_local_exrc". Because -c is for commands, whereas -S sources the file. I also now see that detailed documentation for this is available by running ":help init" from within vim. My initial search for exrc within the man page wasn't sufficient. – projix Jul 17 '12 at 19:56
I meant to say `-c 'source your_local_exrc'` (fixed it now), but `-S` is even better :). – Thor Jul 17 '12 at 20:04

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 17 '12 at 18:47

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Some versions of traditional vi/ex use the EXINIT environment variable as a command string to execute on startup, and execute $HOME/.exrc if it is not set. If you're running such a version, you can set EXINIT to so /other/file/to/execute to source an alternate startup file.

answered Jul 17 '12 at 18:47

evil otto

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Thanks. Now that I've found ":help init" from within vim, I see that the EXINIT environment variable, and its precedence over ~/.exrc, is indeed documented there. – projix Jul 17 '12 at 19:59

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 22 '19 at 13:59

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In your ~/.exrc (for vi) file add following lines at start

set exrc   " Dangerous
set secure " Disables shell and write commands in .exrc/.vimrc

This will make sure that the .exrc file from the current directory will be loaded if it exists.

edited Jul 22 '19 at 13:59

oxr463

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answered Oct 27 '16 at 12:26

prashant

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vi (vim) to read an exrc file other than ~/.exrc

3 Answers3