Invoking vim in .bashrc causes shell to hang-CodePudding

The system I'm using has the program vim named vi. This isn't an alias, the actual program is named vi. To deal with this, I wanted to add an alias to my .bashrc file, and put in a little future-proofing. I came up with this:

if [[ -z `which vim 2>/dev/null` ]] ; then   #vim doesn't exist
   tmp1=`vi -h` 2>/dev/null                  #grab the help text
   #if the help text indicates it's vim, then make the alias
   if [[ "${tmp1:0:17}" == 'VIM - Vi IMproved' ]] ; then
      alias vim=`vi`
   fi
   unset tmp1
fi

But, the tmp1=... line causes my terminal (SSH login via PuTTY) to hang with this message: :
Vim: Warning: Output is not to a terminal
What is causing this, and can it be avoided?

Original question
Putting this line tmp1=`vi -h` into my .bashrc file causes login shells (at least via PuTTY) to hang with the message:
Vim: Warning: Output is not to a terminal
What is causing this, and can it be avoided?

Update per Cyris's 2nd comment:

type vi vim vi is hashed (/usr/bin/vi) -bash: type: vim: not found

CodePudding user response：

The problem isn't with vi -h; it's your attempt to define the alias:

alias vim=`vi`

You are trying to assign the output of vi as the definition of vim. You want regular quotes (or none at all), not backquotes.

# Pick one
alias vim='vi'
alias vim="vi"
alias vim=vi