Another tip. This time for dealing with those occasions when you forget step 1 - saving the generic code under your new file name - and you have buggered up all that lovely shell code you have been building up for months. When this happens, here is what to do:
- Cuss and swear a lot. This helps.
- Make a cup of coffee/tea/imbibe alcohol/ritually sacrifice one of whip's chickens/kick the cat. Whatever makes you feel better.
- On reflection, alcohol and coding don't usually mix well.
- Save the current file under the filename you intended in the first place, before you became an utter dipstick and forgot.
- Re-save the file using your generic file name.
- Repeatedly press ctrl + Z until you return to the state your file was in before you started buggering things up.
- Save the file.
Guess how I know all this works wonders? 
Oh, and set up an 'Archive' folder. Save your generic code to it from time to time. Then when you really, totally bugger things up, you still have something recent to return to.
Then back it up to an alternative drive on your machine.
Then to a memory stick.
Then to an online file sharing facility such as mediafire.
