From creating vi (nvi, on NetBSD) macros, I'm used to thinking in terms of competely replicating the keystrokes that one would do interactively... so I tried it both ways (with and without ^M). The way I published is the one that works. Why the ^M ? Because if you're working interactively the search-pattern isn't submitted until you press Enter. nvi(1) (what NetBSD (and Free and OpenBSD) uses) will accept "-c" "command" arguments which are similar to the less(1) "+"... so, you can:
$ vi -c 123 ./myfile
and start editing "./myfile" at line 123. Nice for edit/compile/edit/compile dance that might happen if you're developing software. Play with that (and try your imagination with other ideas).
