[Gretl-users] unsaved datafile closed w/o asking

[Allin Cottrell]

On Thu, 17 Jan 2008, Sven Schreiber wrote:

> > As a little safety net, couldn't the 'open' command check 
> > whether the current datafile has unsaved changes, and if so, 
> > create an automatic backup copy before discarding it?
> 
> I have been bitten by this again... is there anything wrong 
> about the idea of automatic backups? Especially now that the 
> workdir reforms should have ensured that the directory is 
> writeable.

Could you give me some context on this -- under what circumstances 
does the problem arise?

The general idea is that scripted actions don't ask for 
confirmation, and I'd imagine that if one wants to save changes to 
a datafile in a scripting context one would use "store".

The backup idea seems a bit backwards to me.  Generally a backup 
represents the prior state of a file that has been modified: the 
backup is logically "older" than the non-backup.  But in this case 
the backup would be newer than the regular file, containing 
changes that the user had not saved.

But if I can understand how this issue arises, maybe I can come up 
with a condition under which a confirmation dialog should be 
thrown up.

Allin.