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Mathematica crashed -- where did my notebook go?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg99095] Mathematica crashed -- where did my notebook go?
• From: Bob F <deepyogurt at gmail.com>
• Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:14:26 -0400 (EDT)

Mathematica just crashed on me in the middle of writing a program, and
of course everything I had done is gone. Is there any temporary file
or anything still left on the disk that contains anything of what I
was working on at the time of the crash? I tried to do a bit of
investigating, but could not see any open files that exist while
working on a new notebook, so where does Mathematica put everything I
type into a notebook until I save it?

If it doesn't write anything to a file - why not? My gosh, this
happens often enough to people all over the world, that I would think
that Wolfram would have some sort of recovery mechanism built in, but
I haven't found anything so far. How many times have customers asked
for something like this? How many people think the same thing when
this happens? My guess is a quite a few.

So Wolfram -- add this to your list of things to put in the next
version -- your customers would truly appreciate not having to
recreate that program they had been working on for a couple of hours
when the crash occurred and they very quickly tell themselves -- Oh
CRVPPPPP!!! WHY DIDN'T I SAVE THAT FILE!!!!!

Anything would be better than nothing -- why not use the disk to write
the new notebook contents to while it's being developed. Yes I should
have known that a crash was imminent, but my crystal ball is in the
shop getting a new LED display installed ;-)

If this has happened to you and you wished that Wolfram had some sort
of recovery mechanism, please add your 2 cents to this post and let
Wolfram know how important, we the customers, think this is (or
isn't).

-Bob

ps -- this was on a Mac OS X 10.5.6 system with Mathematica version
7.0.1 if it matters

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Mathematica crashed -- where did my notebook go?
    • From: David Bakin <davidbak@gmail.com>
  • Re: Mathematica crashed -- where did my notebook go?
    • From: Michael <michael2718@gmail.com>