Possible to make a backup of original file in vim?

How about this? After editing the file, before :wq, you can do:

:!cat myfile.txt > backup.txt 

and then save using :wq. The previous content would be stored in backup.txt

UPDATE I realized that my solution might be a little complicated for beginners and unnecessary for single files backups, so if you want a simple solution just use:

:!cp % ~/ 

The % register keeps the name of the file and with this extern command you can copy the current file to your home folder or you can change it to any folder you want.

In Windows you can use this to send to a backup folder on C::

:!copy % \backups\ 

You can turn in a shortcut on your .vimrc with something like:

 nnoremap .b :!cp % ~/ 

Old Answer:

I had the same need to backup before save the modifications, so I created a Bash and a Batch(for Windows) file that backups all the files that I want and used this conditional statement on .vimrc to choose automatically between the two systems:

if has("win32") nnoremap <leader>bc :! C:\C\SCRIPTS\backupWIN.bat<cr> else nnoremap <leader>bc :!bash /home/vini/C/SCRIPTS/backup.sh<cr> endif 

Here the code for the Bash version:

#!/bin/bash #adds the date to folder(you can change the date format) now=$(date +"%d_%m_%Y_%H;%M;%S") mkdir /home/vini/backups/C_BKP/pre_alpha/$now cp -r /home/vini/C /home/vini/backups/C_BKP/pre_alpha/$now echo "saved in: /home/vini/backups/C_BKP/pre_alpha/"$now 

Here the code for the Batch file:

set start=%time% ::I didn't managed to make it print the seconds, so I choose to ::override the same files if I save twice in the same minute @echo off For /f "tokens=1-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set mydate=%%a-%%b-%%c) For /f "tokens=1-4 delims=/:" %%a in ('time /t') do (set mytime=%%ah%%bm%%c) mkdir C:\Users\vini\Desktop\C\C-%mydate%-%mytime% ::careful with xcopy , read the documentation before modify it xcopy /E /Y C:\C C:\Users\vini\Desktop\C\C-%mydate%-%mytime%\ 

You just need to change the name of the directories for match your folders and you are good to go.

As @Sato Katsura pointed out, it is patchmode:

:set patchmode=.orig 

I just simply use:

:!cp % %.backup 

Which will create a new file in the same location with .backup appended to it.