dfaure added a comment.
I just tested how vim handles this. No QSaveFile-like behaviour (direct write, says strace), and in case of partition full, this error message appears: "myfile" E514: write error (file system full?) WARNING: Original file may be lost or damaged don't quit the editor until the file is successfully written! That's the beautiful difference between a text editor and a program saving a config file or whatever else: you can leave the editor open so the data is not lost! I recommend that kate implements something similar, if not already done. For the curious, here's how I investigated vim's behaviour without filling my real partition: cd /tmp dd if=/dev/zero of=loopback count=200 sudo mkfs.ext2 loopback sudo mount -o loop loopback mnt sudo chown $USER:$GID mnt cd mnt yes > myfile # (this ends with "No space left on device") vim myfile # elsewhere: strace -e file -p `pidof vim` in vim, paste a whole bunch of additional text into the file, save REPOSITORY R39 KTextEditor REVISION DETAIL https://phabricator.kde.org/D14890 To: cullmann, dhaumann Cc: dfaure, kwrite-devel, kde-frameworks-devel, michaelh, kevinapavew, ngraham, bruns, demsking, cullmann, sars, dhaumann