If a system crash, network failure, X server crash, or program error should happen while you are editing a file, you can still recover most of your work. NEdit-ng maintains a backup file which it updates periodically (every 8 editing operations or 80 characters typed). This file has the same name as the file that you are editing, but with the character ~ (tilde) prefixed to the name. To recover a file after a crash, simply rename the file to remove the tilde character, replacing the older version of the file. (Because several of the Unix shells consider the tilde to be a special character, you may have to prefix the character with a \ (backslash) when you move or delete an NEdit-ng backup file.)

Example, to recover the file called "help.c" on Unix type the command:

mv ~help.c help.c

A minor caveat, is that if the file you were editing was in MS-DOS format, the backup file will be in Unix format, and you will need to open the backup file in NEdit-ng and change the file format back to MS-DOS via the File → Save As... dialog (or use the Unix unix2dos command outside of NEdit-ng).