On Fri 02 Jan 2004 16:54, Richard Eibrand wrote:
> > [DG, talking rubbish as it turns out:]
> > If nedit had a sh**fit it might well be because the incrementally
> > updated backup that it keeps in ~name.c++ suddenly stopped corresponding
> > to name.c++ while it was running - e.g. if he ran the g++ command line in
> > another window.
> [RE]
> I think it might have been something along those lines alright. Although,
> from his description, it was all within the same command prompt window...
>
Well, I just realised what I said was utter rubbish in its exact form:
partly because it doesn't actually make sense in nedit's case: nedit *always*
has a complete in-memory copy of the file - unlike some other editors that
arose in more resource-constrained times, nedit is "brute force": apparently
it doesn't do the block-paging edit-in-place trick or use a custom swap on
huge files, it always slurps the whole file in and then works on another
in-memory copy of that in-memory data. Thus nedit relies wholly on the OS
virtual memory subsystem to not suck, a good assumption now, probably a bad
assumption in the days when emacs and vi arose. [1]
and partly because (for up to date NEdit (5.4) anyway) nedit (a) gracefully
notices when a file it is editing is changed external to it (tested) and (b)
overwrites the incremental backup file if it is externally corrupted
(tested).
[1]http://www.nedit.org/faq/sect_bugs.shtml#N1236
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