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Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users Why is editing a file by renaming the new one safer? Post 303042600 by Neo on Wednesday 1st of January 2020 03:17:37 AM
Old 01-01-2020
I agree.

For many non-critical files, where I am making small, incremental changes, I often do not make a fresh backup copy, especially because I have off-platform backups as well; and edit the file directory and save it, as normal.

Like zxmaus, I cannot recall every losing a file due to a system crash while editing a file, in over 40 decades of working with computers.

However, I do recall making a lot of "simple human mistakes" and have learned to be "saved by backups". This leads me to always recommend people make and maintain filesystem backups, based on their risk management model (criticality, vulnerability, threats).

These days, more-often-than-not, for a increasing majority of my file edits, if they are significant, I will sftp the file to my desktop, open the file in Visual Studio Code (or cut-and-paste into VSC if a small file) , edit the file using all the available syntax and formatting tools and plugins, and save the edited file with a different name, preserving the original file on my working directory on my desktop, and then I will either sftp or cut-and-past into the remote server over an ssh terminal.

I cannot count the number of times VSC has been helpful to spot a syntax error which missed my tired, overworked eyes. The formatting is also useful (indentations, consistent formatting, etc) is also very useful in VSC. These kinds of tools are really time savers, especially for syntax checking.

It goes without saying, I use vi every day to edit files; but I also use vi in conjunction with VSC, more and more; for the syntax checking and formatting for code (programming languages) and JSON files, etc. But as I am quick to confess I do edit files with vi and do not make make a backup copy, but not often; but if it is some small change which i can easily revert-back based on "memory", then I am guilty. I also push files to private GIT repositories as well, when my work on critical files are done. GIT is Good for backups Smilie
 

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GIT-REVERT(1)							    Git Manual							     GIT-REVERT(1)

NAME
git-revert - Revert an existing commit SYNOPSIS
git revert [--edit | --no-edit] [-n] [-m parent-number] [-s] <commit> DESCRIPTION
Given one existing commit, revert the change the patch introduces, and record a new commit that records it. This requires your working tree to be clean (no modifications from the HEAD commit). Note: git revert is used to record a new commit to reverse the effect of an earlier commit (often a faulty one). If you want to throw away all uncommitted changes in your working directory, you should see git-reset(1), particularly the --hard option. If you want to extract specific files as they were in another commit, you should see git-checkout(1), specifically the git checkout <commit> -- <filename> syntax. Take care with these alternatives as both will discard uncommitted changes in your working directory. OPTIONS
<commit> Commit to revert. For a more complete list of ways to spell commit names, see "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in git-rev-parse(1). -e, --edit With this option, git revert will let you edit the commit message prior to committing the revert. This is the default if you run the command from a terminal. -m parent-number, --mainline parent-number Usually you cannot revert a merge because you do not know which side of the merge should be considered the mainline. This option specifies the parent number (starting from 1) of the mainline and allows revert to reverse the change relative to the specified parent. Reverting a merge commit declares that you will never want the tree changes brought in by the merge. As a result, later merges will only bring in tree changes introduced by commits that are not ancestors of the previously reverted merge. This may or may not be what you want. See the revert-a-faulty-merge How-To[1] for more details. --no-edit With this option, git revert will not start the commit message editor. -n, --no-commit Usually the command automatically creates a commit with a commit log message stating which commit was reverted. This flag applies the change necessary to revert the named commit to your working tree and the index, but does not make the commit. In addition, when this option is used, your index does not have to match the HEAD commit. The revert is done against the beginning state of your index. This is useful when reverting more than one commits' effect to your index in a row. -s, --signoff Add Signed-off-by line at the end of the commit message. AUTHOR
Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com[2]> DOCUMENTATION
Documentation by Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org[3]>. GIT
Part of the git(1) suite NOTES
1. revert-a-faulty-merge How-To file:///usr/share/doc/git-doc/howto/revert-a-faulty-merge.txt 2. gitster@pobox.com mailto:gitster@pobox.com 3. git@vger.kernel.org mailto:git@vger.kernel.org Git 1.7.1 07/05/2010 GIT-REVERT(1)
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