Auto-saving and recovery

Buffers that are associated with files are periodically saved (``auto-saved'') in files whose names begin and end with `#'. After a crash, you can return yourself to the point at which the last auto-save of a given file took place by using the following command in place of C-x C-f or C-x 4 C-f.

M-x recover-file

prompts for a file name, F. It then tries to recover the contents of that file from an auto-save file (named #F#) in the same directory, if such a file exists and is younger than the any file named F in the directory. After completing this command, C-x C-s will save the recovered file to F.