Книга: Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition

2.6.5 Recovering Lost Changes

2.6.5 Recovering Lost Changes

We've just discussed how to eliminate changes you don't want to keep; getting back changes you've lost is a different kind of problem. You might lose changes if the power goes out momentarily or if the computer you're working on suddenly freezes or is turned off accidentally. You might also lose changes if you exit Emacs abnormally. Luckily, Emacs, being the watchful editor that it is, saves your file for you every so often in auto-save files. If you watch carefully, you'll see the message Auto saving in the minibuffer from time to time. Using auto-save files, you can get back most, if not all, of your changes. The name of an auto-save file is the same as the name of the file you are editing, with a sharp (#) added to the beginning and the end. For example, if you are editing the file text, its auto-save file is #text#.

To recover text from an auto-save file, type M-x recover-file Enter. Emacs opens a window that lists both the file and its associated auto-save file so that you can compare the time at which they were created, their size, and so forth. Emacs asks you the following question:

Recover auto-save file #text#? (yes or no)

Type yes to confirm that you want to copy the contents of the auto-save file into the current file or no if you change your mind. (If you are unsure, you might want to use C-x C-f to read the auto-save file #text# into a buffer first and look it over carefully before using the recover-file command. If you really want to compare the differences between the two versions, see "Comparing Files Between Windows" in Chapter 4.)

When does Emacs create auto-save files? Emacs creates an auto-save file every few hundred keystrokes or if Emacs is terminated abnormally.[18] You can change the frequency with which Emacs creates auto-save files by changing the variable auto-save-interval. By default, Emacs creates an auto-save file every 300 keystrokes. For more information on changing variable values, see Chapter 10.

There's one more important fact to know about Emacs and auto-save files. If you delete a large portion of a file, Emacs stops auto-saving the file and displays a message telling you so. To make Emacs start auto-saving again, save the file with C-x C-s or type M-1 M-x auto-save Enter (that's the number 1).

Now you've learned enough commands for most of the editing you'll do with Emacs. At this point, you may want to learn how to make Emacs turn on certain features like auto-fill mode automatically, so you don't have to turn them on every time you enter Emacs. The next section provides a brief introduction to customization; this topic is covered in much greater detail in Chapter 10.

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