VIM is great!

Today is another vim-saved-my-file day. I don't know how often this has happened so far, but this time I was really worried.

While I was editing an important document (LaTeX-File) my computer crashed (I have been closing the laptop lid and after opening it, everything was screwed. Something with the power management of Linux).

Of course I hadn't saved my recent changes (about 1000 words of text). With any other editor it would have been gone, in the worst case even the entire file (I had to turn off my computer by pressing the power button for 5 seconds).

After the reboot I opened the same file in Vim again. Even the unsaved changes were restored. This is because Vim saves all your actions after the last save in a hidden file that can be used to restore any unsaved changes in case of a crash.

In my life I have lost many files through crashes or buggy software. In Windows Notepad, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, AbiWord, MS-Paint, GIMP, gedit, etc. Sometimes it was my fault, sometimes the program or my computer just decided to crash (don't say that Linux doesn't crash - that counts only for careful configured Linux servers, not for a sloppy desktop system like mine).

But, what I wanted to say, I've never lost a single file, or even part of a file with Vim. This is how good editing software should work.

Oh, and if you are reading this, it means that I haven't lost this blog entry either. I mean, not until the moment I posted it. And if you want to know what Vim is, it's a text editor with many keyboard shortcuts and a very powerful command mode. Download it at http://www.gvim.org!