a question about evim

[Paul Lussier]

Bill Freeman <f at ke1g.mv.com> writes:

> 	I know that emacs has a way to defeat this behavior, though I
> don't remember what it is, since, thinking that turning off backups is
> a bad idea, I didn't pay attention.  Probably evim has a way too.
>
> 	I still think that it's a bad idea.  I'd advise getting used
> to and enjoying the existence of the backups.

Oh good lord of the holy penguins Bat Man!  I don't know how long it
would take me to kill my computer if I couldn't turn that off :)

I have two words for this: Revision Control!

Use some sort of revision control on your files and you'll never be
sorry.  In fact, this foo.txt~ is a poor man's revision control, so it
is better than nothing.  However, it's also very messy and leads to
extremely messy directories.  RCS is cheap, easy, and fast.  For hard
core revisionists like myself, use subversion or cvs.  The ability to
create changelogs when committing files and record metadata is often
invaluable. 

I've had my homedirectory under subversion for almost 3 years.  I
can't count the number of times it's saved my bacon :) The ability to
check out my homedir accross the internet to my work systems, or to a
friends system so I can even just look at a file is priceless.

> 	As those who know me will expect, I recommend emacs.  emacs is
> emacs, no matter what subsystems you eventually decide to
> enable/install to use within it.

Emacs also has an "autosave" feature (which is *not* the renaming of
files to include .~X~) which will save your file to a backup file
between saves should the system/application/universe come crumbling
down around you when you're least likely to be ready for it.

By  the way, from the vim faq:

5.2 Why is a backup file written even if I set nobackup?

In order to keep Vim from writing a backup, you must also do
``:set nowritebackup''.


-- 

Seeya,
Paul