Strange behavior from ex when input is redirected

[Steve Weil]

I have an application which needs to run an editor script with ex (sed
and ed will not do).  Even though my environment is properly set with
TERM and TERMCAP, when I type "ex < file", the editor does not seem to
know my terminal type.  On the VAX (4.2) this is not so bad, but on an
NCR Tower ex refused to do any editing without a cursor addressable
terminal.  Depending upon specifics, I got messages like:
    Terminal must have UP capability to use open/visual mode
(even thought the only command in the file was "set"), or
    Unknown terminal type "dumb"

Is anyone familiar with this problem?  Is there a workaround?
By the way, does the Tower have a Unisoft port?
	Thanks in advance,

Steve Weil		Data I/O
dual!unisoft!dataio!weil	entropy!dataio!weil
ucbvax!lbl-unix!uw-beaver!teltone!dataio!weil