Last night I was doing some testing that required a number of carefully constructed test files. I was testing a file import function that is flexible and tolerant with the format of the file. To properly test it, I needed many test files with various valid and invalid formats. Not only was I trying to validate that the import would work with valid data, but I also want to make sure the program would detect invalid data and handle the errors appropriately.
At the eleventh hour a colleague reported to me that he knew of a circumstance where the program would fail. I decided to take one of my test files and modify it so that it contained the same invalid construct that was purported to fail. I found a file that had some suitably formatted data and did some "search and replace" operations and some other manual edited. After about 15 minutes, I had a new test file that should produce this new error. I clicked the save button in my editor. Suddenly, I had a sinking feeling, I forgot to change the name of the file. I had just overwritten one of my test files that I spent significant time constructing.
The sinking feeling didn't last long. Thank goodness, my files were backed up with Rhinoback. I right clicked on a little icon in my system tray, selected restore, and selected the file that I had just overwritten. In less than 2 minutes, my file was restored to it's original state. Whew, that one little restore saved me enough time to cover the monthly fee I paid for Rhinoback a few times over.
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