Vim in Cloud, part 3

Work non-destructively

Imagine you are reviewing a file and type an instant message to a mate, but unfortunately the window focus was is still on the editor😱… Or perhaps you try an improvement, test it, and you realized it was a bad idea and need to revert to the original version?
Well, in the cloud -based editor you could try undo. Also you can also restore the file from the repository (git restore), but vim offers several options for different occasions.

• You can open a file in read-only mode:
  $ view file

• or open a file normally and prevent accidental changes by
  :set noma
:set ma
  This is my favorite, for every saved milestone – you can jump back to the shell by [Ctrl]+[Z] and test the code, return to coding (command fg)

• at least, right after opening a file, you can enable backup:
  :set backup

Checkout backup feature

Let’s have a file:

$ vim a-file.txt

with a content:

Save it and quit (:wq). Then revisit it, execute the (bash) command, still at vim with [ESC]

:! ls -tr a-*

You should see:

a-file.txt

Press ENTER or type command to continue

So press [ENTER] and at vim again execute : ([ESC])

:set backup

write the file (:w), check the directory content again (:! ls -tr a-*)

a-file.txt~ a-file.txt

Press ENTER or type command to continue

Now you have a backup file (notice extension with tilde).

Now delete “line 2”, write the file and quit (:wq). See the difference to backup… maybe like this 😜

Backup untracked by Git

Expect the backup file to be untracked by Git.

$ git status
On branch …
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/…'.

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
        a-file.txt~

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

to be continued…