Elementary OS Code save behavior

Question

I lost a lot of changes recently and I'm trying to figure out what went wrong, how to avoid this issue in the future, and how to recover my work if possible.

• Does Elementary OS's Code app save files when you press CTRL+q?
• Does it save files when you press CTRL+s?
• Is there any visual indicator of whether the file has unsaved changes, such as an asterisk next to the filename?
• Are there any common actions that might disable saving, such as switching to dark mode or attaching the document to an email (outside Code)?
• Does it save backups or anything like emacs's #foo.txt# and ~foo.txt?

Answer 1

As far as I know, Code saves changes constantly. Changes made are saved without needing to manually Ctrl+S, and this means changes are saved even when you Ctrl+Q. Ctrl+S will allow you to save the file to a specific location if you haven't already.

Ctrl+S is still functioning as a save button, yes. If you disable autosave in Code's preferences, you will see an asterisk before the file name in the tab representing the file you have open.

Changing the style or sending the file via a third party app will not inhibit autosaving. Files can be accessed by multiple applications at once, and a copy/send doesn't impact the data on the file itself.

As for emacs, I'm unaware of the process there so I don't know how to draw a comparison.