Yeah, I've always wondered why Stallman et al, when they wrote v19, left enable-local-variables to t when they should have followed what they did with enable-local-eval which is set to query the user. At least it can be turned off or set to query in site-start.el or default.el. Vi (acutally ex - vi inherits it) has a similar feature, or at least some versions do. It required a line with (as I recall) something like : followed by an ex command in the first or last five lines. As I recall that feature doesn't exist everywhere. It doesn't seem to be documented in Solaris 2.3's vi or ex man page. We had a problem with this under Ultrix at one point because our password file had an entry that fit the bill. Took us a while to figure out why vipw cause the file to get messed up. Fortunately :q! got us out of it without a disaster :-) Dave Goldberg Post: The Mitre Corporation MS B020 202 Burlington Rd. Bedford, MA 01730 Phone: 617-271-3887 Domain: dsg@mitre.org UUCP: {your neighborhood}!linus!mdf!dsg