Ok, so the answer to that is “Me and other computer geeks. But nobody else”
I was just working on some PHP and as I made more and more changes to it it got worse and worse until the point where I realized why the changes I was making wouldn’t work anyway.
So I held down the ctrl key, poised another finger over the z key, and…
taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap…
Then I realized I’d gone too far back. So I held my finger over the y key…
taptaptaptaptaptap…
Back to where the code was ‘most correct’.
What makes it interesting is, I could see in ‘real-time’ an animation of the devolution and evolution of the code as I tap tap tapped.
I have a (n apple friendly) t-shirt that reads “Thank you, Command-z” and has a picture of the Command key. I rarely wear it because it’s too low cut to be decent, but I sure appreciate the sentiment. Although I get supremely irritated at programs that use command-z or control-z to toggle undo/redo and make you hit a third key to keep undoing repeatedly.
Slight hijack, but you know what else is fun? Control+v, on someone else’s computer. Even people who delete cookies and browser histories forget about this one.
Its not very reliable, though. Most programs cut the undo history after some steps, and its very frustrating to know that you’d need just 2 more steps… but went back as far as possible.
I try do it from time to time in real life. I’m tired, I mess something up when I’m not on the computer, and I think “undo!”. Once I even did the twitch my hand would do on the keyboard.
ctrl-y does the opposite of ctrl-z. It’s ‘redo’. It takes you forward one edit at a time.
It can only be used if you have already cntrl-zded.
Edit: I use notepad++ to edit php. If it does have a limit to how far back you can go then it is a large limit. I was able to ctrl-z all the way back to the state the file was in when I first opened it.
In addition to the aforementioned redo the last undone/ctrl-z command, it acts as a repeat the last command: if the undo buffer (?) is empty, it will act as the anti-undo and redo the voodoo that you do.
If you’ve never used it like that, go open a Word document and play around a bit. It even redoes typing. Very, very handy.
I’m not really sure what the OP is talking about, but this is true. I’m uber uber paranoid about this though. As soon as I a m done copying/pasting something, I copy and paste to the letter d or something innocuous.
Well I’m disappointed, i thought this thread was going to be about suspend/delayed suspend job control functionalities, but it seems like the OP isn’t a ‘real’ computer geek.
Pastes whatever is in the copy/paste buffer. Highlight some text, press Control-C. Then move the cursor somewhere else, press Control-V. Instant perfect copy. Even works to different windows/apps.
