Lost all my source code... PHP file encoded itself?

[system]

I’m a little bit upset right now… I’ve been working on an emulator source for a game in PHP. Well, earlier today, I saved a PHP file in notepad++, and then turned off my computer. I had to go to an appointment with my doctor. So I did that and then went to get food, which took about 2 hours. I got home, turned on my computer, and opened my PHP file only to see all the code gone? It turned into about 5000 characters of a “NUL” symbol, that I cant even paste anywhere to show you. I’m angry and clueless at what has happened, I saved my work properly and never messed around with anything. All the other files in the directory are fine, but this is the main file, the engine of what I was working on. And now it’s gone.

Please help me figure out what has happened and if I can get my work back :’(

[astonecipher]

This would be one reason for version control. If it didn’t auto-save, there isn’t much you can do.

[Topcoder]

Things like this happen to everyone, whether it’s writing code, an email, a document, etc.

Even with source control, you can lose all the changes since the last time you commited it. But at least you’ll have a starting point to go back to.

Just think of it this way, the second time you do something it always turns out so much better.

But look into free source control, there’s a lot of places that provide it up to 50 megs free…

I use this one now…

https://riouxsvn.com/

I used to use http://projectlocker.com/ - Until they went to a subscription model.

[JimL]

Use github or gitlab for versioning