A little VI problem

[mek at pyuxss.UUCP]

This may or may not be a new question, but has anyone out there noticed that
when using VI to read in a file, i.e. via
:r file
occasionally a blank line gets inserted before the first line in the  file
you are editing? If this is a feature, is there any way to prevent it from
happening? If this is a bug, how can it be fixed? I am using VI version 3.7
as of 10/31/81.