*recover.txt*   Nvim


		  VIM REFERENCE MANUAL    by Bram Moolenaar


Recovery after a crash					*crash-recovery*

You have spent several hours typing in that text that has to be finished
next morning, and then disaster strikes: Your computer crashes.

			DON'T PANIC!

You can recover most of your changes from the files that Vim uses to store
the contents of the file.  Mostly you can recover your work with one command:
	vim -r filename

                                      Type |gO| to see the table of contents.

==============================================================================
1. The swap file					*swap-file*

Vim stores the things you changed in a swap file.  Using the original file
you started from plus the swap file you can mostly recover your work.

You can see the name of the current swap file being used with the command:

	:sw[apname]					*:sw* *:swapname*

Or you can use the |swapname()| function, which also allows for seeing the
swap file name of other buffers.

The name of the swap file is normally the same as the file you are editing,
with the extension ".swp".
- On Unix, a '.' is prepended to swap file names in the same directory as the
  edited file.  This avoids that the swap file shows up in a directory
  listing.
- If this file already exists (e.g., when you are recovering from a crash) a
  warning is given and another extension is used, ".swo", ".swn", etc.
- An existing file will never be overwritten.
- The swap file is deleted as soon as Vim stops editing the file.

							*E326*
Technical: If the ".swp" file name already exists, the last character is
	   decremented until there is no file with that name or ".saa" is
	   reached.  In the last case, no swap file is created.

By setting the 'directory' option you can place the swap file in another place
than where the edited file is.
Advantages:
- You will not pollute the directories with ".swp" files.
- When the 'directory' is on another partition, reduce the risk of damaging
  the file system where the file is (in a crash).
Disadvantages:
- You can get name collisions from files with the same name but in different
  directories (although Vim tries to avoid that by comparing the path name).
  This will result in bogus ATTENTION warning messages.
- When you use your home directory, and somebody else tries to edit the same
  file, that user will not see your swap file and will not get the ATTENTION
  warning message.

If you want to put swap files in a fixed place, put a command resembling the
following ones in your vimrc:
	:set dir=~/tmp		(for Unix)
	:set dir=c:\\tmp	(for Win32)
This is also very handy when editing files on floppy.  Of course you will have
to create that "tmp" directory for this to work!

For read-only files, a swap file is not used right away. The swap file is
created only when making changes.

The 'swapfile' option can be reset to avoid creating a swapfile.  And the
|:noswapfile| modifier can be used to not create a swapfile for a new buffer.

:nos[wapfile]   {command}			*:nos* *:noswapfile*
		Execute {command}. If it contains a command that loads a new
		buffer, it will be loaded without creating a swapfile and the
		'swapfile' option will be reset.  If a buffer already had a
		swapfile it is not removed and 'swapfile' is not reset.


Detecting an existing swap file ~

You can find this in the user manual, section |11.3|.

									*W325*
The default |SwapExists| handler (|default-autocmds|) skips the |E325| prompt
(and automatically chooses "(E)dit") if the swapfile owner process is still
running and owned by the current user.  This presumes that you normally don't
want to be bothered with the |ATTENTION| message just because you happen to
edit the same file from multiple Nvim instances.  In the worst case (a system
crash) there will be more than one swapfile for the file; use |:recover| to
inspect all of its swapfiles.


Updating the swapfile ~

The swap file is updated after typing 200 characters or when you have not
typed