On Saturday 10 Jul 2004 7:50 pm, mike wrote: > Justin Grote wrote: > > On 7/10/2004 at 11:33 AM, mike ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > > > m> Hello, > > m> something I was wondering about, when I create a file and modify > > it m> a backup is made automatically. I have seen it before but > > never m> wondered to much figureing it helps keep me from screwing > > up a lot m> of things. > > > > m> What is doing the backups? Just curious. > > > > m> Mike > > > > Do you modify it with emacs or nano(pico)? if so, they > > automatically make backups. There's a command line switch to > > disable this behavior if you want it to. > > Hi Justin, > > No on nano but I do use vi in console and kwrite in kde. > Both make a back up after I modify the file. > > I'll take a look for switchs in both and see what I can find.
It's the editor. Standard methodology is: save the new file under a temporary name rename the old file to the backup name rename the new file to the correct name That does break hard links, so usually there are also preferences to make them do the backup by copying the file. Some big OSs do the backups themselves, but we're talking mainframes and minis. VMS, George... Try googling "File Generation Number". One of the best error messages of all time. MaxiMOP was an operating system that ran on top of George on ICL1900 mainframes. (If you'd ever used George, you'd know why.) As an OS, MaxiMOP needed to keep a large number of files open, but George limited it to something low. To get round this MaxiMOP renamed files it had "open" to "MAXIFILE", with different file generation numbers. Of course that only made it harder, but still possible, for someone in the George world to open the file and make it unavailable to MaxiMOP. MaxiMOP would then tell its user that the "File Has Mysteriously Disappeared." -- Richard Urwin
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