6.  Special Arrangements for Startup

      Vi takes the value of $TERM and looks up the characteristics of that terminal in the file /etc/termcap. If you don't know vi's name for the terminal you are working on, look in /etc/termcap.

      When vi starts, it attempts to read the variable EXINIT from your environment.* If that exists, it takes the values in it as the default values for certain of its internal constants. See the section on "Set Values" for further details. If EXINIT doesn't exist you will get all the normal defaults.

      Should you inadvertently hang up the phone while inside vi, or should the computer crash, all may not be lost. Upon returning to the system, type: 

vi -r file
This will normally recover the file. If there is more than one temporary file for a specific file name, vi recovers the newest one. You can get an older version by recovering the file more than once. The command "vi -r" without a file name gives you the list of files that were saved in the last system crash (but not the file just saved when the phone was hung up).