Files and saving
An editor’s first job is not to lose or damage your text. This page is how crc does that.
Saving
Section titled “Saving”Saves are atomic: crc writes a new file and swaps it in, so a crash or a full disk mid-save never leaves half a file. The file’s mode, links and symlink targets are kept.
File › Revert to Saved throws away your edits and goes back to what is on disk.
When another program changes a file
Section titled “When another program changes a file”crc watches the project folder.
| The tab is… | What happens |
|---|---|
| Clean | It reloads with the new contents. |
| Dirty | Nothing changes until you save. Then crc asks: Overwrite, Cancel or Reload. |
| Deleted on disk | The tab is marked unsaved, so closing it asks first. |
This is what makes Claude Code, formatters and
git checkout safe to run next to open tabs.
Closing and quitting
Section titled “Closing and quitting”Closing a tab or quitting crc with unsaved changes asks first.
Crash recovery
Section titled “Crash recovery”If crc crashes, the text of every unsaved document is written to
~/Library/Application Support/crc/recovery/ before the process ends. The
next time crc starts, it asks whether to restore them.
Recovery covers crashes in crc’s own code. It does not cover a power cut.
Encodings and line endings
Section titled “Encodings and line endings”crc keeps what the file had:
- UTF-8, with or without a byte-order mark
- UTF-16 with a BOM
- Windows-1252
- LF, CRLF and every other line ending
The encoding and line ending are shown in the status line.
Very large files
Section titled “Very large files”| Size | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Up to 512 MB | Opens normally. A 100 MiB file costs what a small one does. |
| Over 512 MB | Opens read-only, and says why. |
| Over 2 GB | Refused, and says why. |
Lines too long to shape quickly are drawn without shaping, and the status line says so while one is on screen.