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- Virecover is a program which extracts the most recent version of a text file
- from a temporary file in /usr/tmp.
-
- When you edit a file with Elvis, only about 5K bytes of the file are stored
- in RAM; the rest is stored in a file in /usr/tmp. This allows you to edit
- files larger than a process' data space. It also plays a big part in the
- way that "undo" and "paste" were implemented.
-
- The virecover program basically extracts the "undo" version from the file.
- This is most useful when the system (or Elvis) crashes in the middle of a
- long edit session, because the "undo" version of the file contains all but
- your last change. Nearly all of your work can be salvaged.
-
- There are two ways to invoke virecover:
-
- virecover textfilename
- virecover </usr/tmp/viname
-
- The first way is the most common. You just give virecover the name of the file
- you were editing, and it finds the matching file in /usr/tmp and writes the
- newest available version of the file over the current version. It then
- deletes the /usr/tmp file.
-
- The other way, where you redirect its stdin to come from a particular /usr/tmp
- file, is used when you have either
- - forgotten which file that is & you want to see its contents, or
- - when you want to recover the file, without losing either the /usr/tmp
- file or the current version of the text file.
-