Sharon Kimble <boudiccas <at> talktalk.net> writes: > > Can somebody help me please, I want to put this line into my .emacs - > 'cp ~/.emacs ~/.emacs.d/.emacs-$(date +%Y%m%d-%R)' but it works as part > of a bash script, but I don’t know elisp to get it working in my .emacs. > What it does is save a dated and timed copy of your .emacs in your > ~/.emacs.d so that when you're trying things out and learning how to > use .emacs you'll always have a backup copy. A case in point, last > night I had org2blog working, today, after fiddling its stopped > working, but if I'd had this operational I could just revert to a known > and working .emacs. So, can you help please? > > Thanks > Sharon.
Hi Sharon Emacs already have a builtin file version control. If you use Emacs itself to edit your .emacs, it will most likely create a .emacs~, which is a backup. This is controlled by the variable make-backup-files. Add this line to your .emacs: (setq make-backup-files t) You may want to have several backup files. They will be numbered with names like .emacs.~7~ Then add this line to your .emacs: (setq version-control t) Of course this works for all files visited by Emacs, not only .emacs. Look at the documentation: within Emacs, type C-h i then navigate to Emacs > Files > Saving > Backup Have fun