emacs why do I have hashes at the ends of my file names i.e. #test.c#

Question

Hello,

I am using emacs 22.2.1 on Ubuntu 9.04.

Every time I open a file and work on it, and then when I list the files in the directory in the terminal I see hashes at the ends of each file.

i.e.

#test.c#
#test.h#

Why is this and how can I remove them?

Many thanks for any advice,

Answer 1

It's a backup (autosave) file. Emacs should remove them when it finishes editing the file, unless it dies or you kill it without saving the files. It's better not to remove these files since if you do, you cannot recover if Emacs should crash for some reason. When you start Emacs again you can recover the file with M-x recover-this-file to recover it from the backup.

Answer 2

These are autosave files.
Have a look at this link to change the files to be in a different directory. Have a look at this

Answer 3

Emacs performs a timely backup so you can always have the changes you've made (minus the last 5 minutes of your work) in case of a crash. You can remove it by this command from your working directory rm #*

Answer 4

It's a recovery file that emacs creates when you haven't saved your file in a while (but only if it contains unsaved text). As soon as you save your file the recover file is removed. If emacs should crash before you can save, the file can be recovered with M-x recover-file.

Answer 5

You have encountered the feature named "autosave". It saves modified buffers that have not been saved by the user for a while.

I have seen people disable it or change the location of the autosaved buffers to a temporary directory. You can also get more info there, for instance.