Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ginosko!uunet!mcsun!ukc!kl-cs!jonathan
From: jonathan@cs.keele.ac.uk (Jonathan Knight)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: vi abbreviation for :w :n ?
Message-ID: <764@kl-cs.UUCP>
Date: 25 Sep 89 12:46:18 GMT
References: <9652@chinet.chi.il.us>
Organization: University of Keele, England
Lines: 19

From article <9652@chinet.chi.il.us>, by les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell):
> 
> Keep in mind that aw also causes a the file to be automatically written
> when you do a shell escape.  I have been bitten by this a few times when
> I realized during an editing session that I had made substantial changes
> and should have made a backup copy of the original.  No problem, just:
> :!cp % %.O
> except that with autowrite enabled, the current buffer is written out
> before the shell escape, so goodbye original file...

Yep.  However if you want to get out of this (or if you've forgotten
to give yourself write permission to the file your editing) then
just :sh and vi will give you a shell without saving the file.  Now
you can undo the damage.
-- 
  ______    JANET :jonathan@uk.ac.keele.cs     Jonathan Knight,
    /       BITNET:jonathan%cs.kl.ac.uk@ukacrl Department of Computer Science
   / _   __ other :jonathan@cs.keele.ac.uk     University of Keele, Keele,
(_/ (_) / / UUCP  :...!ukc!kl-cs!jonathan      Staffordshire.  ST5 5BG.  U.K.