Crash Recovery

If a system crash, network failure, X server crash, or program error should happen while you are editing a file, you can easily recover most of your work. NEdit maintains a backup file which it updates periodically (every 8 editing operations or 30 characters typed under Unix, or 80 characters under VMS). This file is has the same name as the file that you are editing, but with the character "~" (tilde) on Unix or "_" (underscore) on VMS prefixed to the name. To recover a file after a crash, simply rename the file to remove the tilde or underscore character, replacing the older version of the file. Because several of the Unix shells consider the tilde to be a special character, you may have to prefix the character with a "\" (backslash) when you move or delete an NEdit backup file.

Example, to recover the file called "help.c" type the command:

mv \~help.c help.c

A minor caveat, is that if the file you were editing was in MS DOS format, the backup file will be in Unix format, and you will need to open the backup file in NEdit and change the file format back to MS DOS via the Save As... dialog (or use the Unix unix2dos command outside of NEdit).