Created:        2022-03-26 Sat
Last modified:  2022-03-31 Thu

Vim: File Recovery and Dealing with Swap Files

Vim recovery using swap files are really helpful feature. But it's rather annoying to compare file versions before and after recovery.

In order to simplify this process here is an alias for applying recovery and creating separate file with '.recovered' suffix.

$ alias vimrecovery='vim -u NONE -r -c '\'':w ! cat >> %.recovered'\'' -c q!'

Vim help files recommends

Be sure that the recovery was successful before overwriting the original file or deleting the swap file. It is good practice to write the recovered file elsewhere and run 'diff' to find out if the changes you want are in the recovered file. Or use :DiffOrig.

Once you are sure the recovery is ok delete the swap file. Otherwise, you will continue to get warning messages that the ".swp" file already exists.

In my case it looks in the following way

$ vimrecovery filename.ext
$ vimdiff filename.ext filename.ext.recovered
$ # choose [O]pen Read-Only and compare
$ # if recovered file looks good than recover original file
$ # type ':e' and choose (R)ecover (diff should show identical content)
$ # type ':w' to save changes
$ # type ':e' and choose (D)elete it
$ # type ':qa' to exit
$ rm filename.ext.recovered

Quick way if there were no data loss

If you're pretty sure that file will not change after recovering, you can do the following

$ vim filename.ext
$ # choose (R)ecover
$ # if you get message
$ #   Recovery completed. Buffer contents equals file contents.
$ #   You may want to delete the .swp file now.
$ # than type ':e': and choose (D)elete it
$ # otherwise choose (A)bort and recover as described above

References

• Vim help files: Basic recovery

• How to make vim recover files from command line?

• How does the vim "write with sudo" trick work?

• What's the easiest way to delete Vim swapfiles I've already recovered from?