A WARNING FOR USERS OF DEVPAC V3 and HiSoft LATTICE C
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                                 By Peter Hibbs

     This note details a bug (well I think  it's a bug) in DevPac Version 3
     and also in the Lattice C editor  which  can  lead to the loss of your
     source code, as I found to my cost. Unfortunately the problem does not
     show itself until it is too late.

     Referring to the DevPac 3.1 assembler first.

     Let's suppose you have a large source code file in memory and you have
     just added a large chunk of new  code which may (or hopefully may not)
     crash when it is run. Naturally you would save it to disk first before
     you run it. I normally assemble  the  code  to check that there are no
     syntax errors before I save the  file  to  disk.  In DevPac V3, on the
     successful  completion  of  the  assembly,  the  screen  displays  the
     'messages' screen which shows the  number  of  bytes used, time taken,
     etc, etc. Before you run your program  to test it you would first save
     the source code to disk by pressing ALT  S (or use the drop down menu)
     just in case the program crashes when it is run. Let's suppose you try
     and save it while  the  'messages'  screen  is still displayed (DevPac
     allows this) instead of switching back  to  your source code, the file
     selector appears with the name of your source code file showing in the
     filename box as usual and you could  be forgiven for thinking that you
     were saving that file to disk.

                                    WRONG !!

     The file that is saved is the text currently displayed on screen, i.e.
     the 'messages' information and what's more, it overwrites your program
     source file on disk since it  uses  the  same filename. You can easily
     check this if you are  using  a  third  party  file selector which can
     display the file sizes of files  on  disk,  the saved file will now be
     only a few hundred bytes depending on  the size of the message screen.
     If you now run your program and  it  crashes badly so that you have to
     reboot the machine, you  have  lost  your  source  file data. The same
     applies, of course, if you  finish  a programming session by rebooting
     the computer (a dangerous practice) instead of exiting DevPac with the
     'quit' option which allows you to save any unsaved files.

     There are two things you  can  do  to  ensure  your  data is not lost.
     Firstly make sure the 'back-up' option is enabled when you save files.
     This will not help, of course, if you  should save a file twice but if
     you should accidentally save the  messages  information and then crash
     the program, the .BAK file should be still OK.

     The safest way is to ALWAYS make sure that whenever you save a file to
     disk, you are actually looking at  the  correct source file on screen.
     This is also relevant if you have  more  than one source file open, it
     is very easy to save the wrong one if they look similar.

     The above notes also apply to HiSofts Lattice C editor/compiler.

                             YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !