sorting a BIG file (solved)

[Nicole Delbecque & Paul Bijnens]

In article <16010 at smoke.brl.mil>, gwyn at smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) says:
>/usr/tmp is the usual default directory for temporary files, and is
>normally expected to have more space in it than /tmp.  /tmp should
>be used only by critical system software, not for potentially huge
>user temporary files (such as are created during merge sorting).

Relating to this: vi makes its temporary files in /tmp.
With 'set dir=/usr/tmp' in EXINIT (or .exrc) I can make vi put
it's temporary files there, like I want it (users edit HUGE files
on our system with vi).  However, if the system crashes, then
in the start-up script when going from single to multi-user mode,
the program '/usr/lib/expreserve -' tries to make the best of the
temporary files from vi/ex in /tmp and makes them recoverable in
the directory /usr/preserve.  'expreserve' does not look in /usr/tmp.
There is nothing in the manual about the options to 'expreserve',
e.g. what is the meaning of the single dash... (I can guess...).
There isn't even anything in the manual about expreserve.
Is there some way to indicate to 'expreserve' where to look for
the cadavers of vi/ex-temporary files?
At this moment I do:
     ... mount filesystems ...
     mv /usr/tmp/[ER]x[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9] /tmp
     /usr/lib/expreserve -
However, there may not always be enough place in /tmp to hold all
these files.  Just lucky we never crash... :-)
Any better suggestion?

If it matters: SYSV various flavors here.  Vi "ver" says:
    Version 3.7 10/31/81     on SYSV2 old
    Version 3.9 2/9/83       on SYSV2 newer
    Version SVR3.1           on SYSV3
--
Polleke   (Paul Bijnens)
Linguistics dept., K. University Leuven, Belgium
FFAAC09 at cc1.kuleuven.ac.be