RE: .swp files

>> On 5 Nov 2020, at 13:44, Kevin Reynolds <reykevster@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> God Damned Vim.
>> It keeps trashing my files. I just lost a file that included everything I did in 2019 for some unknown reason. I open up the file and vim tells me it's already open. So I recover it, and 90% of it is gone. This is not the first time either. God Damn vim. I like vim but I will never use it again. It keeps trashing my files. God Damn you

>On Thu, Nov 5, 2020 at 12:53 PM Maxim Abalenkov <maxim.abalenkov@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello Kevin,
>
> I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your work. But potentially it is not Vim's problem. Vim is a text editor, not a back-up software. It is our responsibility to back-up work and organise those back-up files. To my mind Vim is already doing a great job in saving all your "historic" edits in temporary files.
>
> —
> Best wishes,
> Maxim
>
also

>Yeah: Long before I knew about Vim, when doing translations on a PC-XT using an editor much simpler than Vim (but anyway far less simple than Notepad), I learnt to save my work ever quarter-hour and never to stand up without first saving.

>Now that I'm using Vim (with swapfiles enabled) I've kept the habit, so if an electrical mains cutout forces me to wait then reboot, the ATTENTION message will usually include the line "modified: no" which means I can safely answer d(elete) as many times as there are split-windows being reloaded. Vim >never thrashes _my_ files.

>Best regards,
>Tony.

As someone once wrote,

Three things are certain,
Death, taxes, loss of data.
Guess which has occurred?

Just to add my voice to others, that's very frustrating and I feel your pain - from lost data in the past - but it's not vim's fault. It's surely better to spend a few hours checking into the backup settings rather than give up on a great editor you've spent at least a year on and love. Personally I go belt-and-braces - I let vim use swap files and attempt to recover them if there's a crash, which has on occasion been useful, but also save regularly myself and make backups happen. It's the only way to be sure. I've never had vim lose work for me, I've only lost work because I didn't personally save and back up. Personally. You can't trust computers. Please don't give up on a great editor and set yourself up for in a few years, "God Damned E-ditor, it keeps trashing my files as well, just like vim did."

Just like to add to the recent "Happy birthday" messages, as an IT professional I've been using vim now for about 21 years (after careful comparison with other editors) and it must have been the most consistently powerful and productive tool I've learnt. So flexible and powerful. So many people bring up problems where I can say "... Or, you can just issue these 3 commands in a minute using vim and solve it". And it supports a charity as well. Thank you Bram, and everyone.

regards,
Geoff








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