Many crashes and corrupt files since 5.0.6 (character "ÿ" in files)

@LouCypher:

Thank you for this brief recapitulation of this severe bug. I totally agree to your conclusions, and i really hope that Jan is succeusfull in finding the reason. Because i am developing software in a special database oriented language i am unfortunately not able to help with Delphi ...

Regards,
Roger

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022-02-10 15:48 by rseibel.

LouCypher:

...
7.) The similarity of all corresponding bug reports is that the start of the inserted unwanted characters starts always with a "ÿ" followed by some binary bytes. Digging through the PSPad settings I find one setting which is related to UTF-8 coding which mentions "ÿ"....

What about an itegrated check for "ÿ" before saving and auto-saving at least within the beta-versions? Jan, what do you think?

Thats not possible, because the former content (mostly one keyword) is destroyed ...

I think Andreas had a temporary workaround in his mind until the problem is found and fixed. As far as I understand by presenting a warning if this "ÿ" appears somewhere in a file before the intact file on disk gets overwritten with the faulty content.

LouCypher:

I think Andreas had a temporary workaround in his mind until the problem is found and fixed....

Exactly

My fault, i misunderstood, a warning and preventing to save a faulty file is a good idea!

Nice summary.

You can also add that opening files from outside PSPad and closing tabs with double click are sure ways to get a ÿ (or Chinese chars) in a file, but only in 1 file at a time.

This ÿ seems to be an EOL character which often tends to replace a lonely closing bracket } as said. I work with JavaScript and PHP so I have a lot.

Of note is that when you correct a faulty file, if the ÿ does reappear it will be at the exact same place as the first time no matter how the file was modified in-between, which is surprising.

So for the time being to avoid this nasty bug, I use only session to manage files: no double click to close tabs, no File Explorer to open files, no files opened from outside, etc. and so far coding productivity has improved nicely since a month or 2.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022-02-18 09:25 by tmtisfree.

Thanks for your analysis of this problem. I’ve been using PSPad for years and have kept up with the updates. After updating to 5.0.6, PSPad became so unstable as to be unusable. Several times a day I’d get that rogue “ÿ” character often followed by other unwanted characters mysteriously appearing in files. I’ve tried several adjustments to settings (shooting in the dark) but nothing works. I’ve reverted to version 5.0.4 (543) 32 bit for now.
There are many alternatives editor but none suits me like PSPad, when it’s working properly. Kudos to Jan Fiala at. al. for such a well thought out design. But please, make it work.

5.0.6 is unstable, I agree. If you want you can try 5.0.7 (available in the pspad developer forum). Use 32b version please.

LouCypher:

2.) It seems to be independant of loaded file types. It has been reported at least for C/C++, Basic and Jason code.
3.) It happens even without editing anything within a loaded file.
4.) It seems to occur always at the end of some code blocks (like closing curly brackets in C/C++ or Endifs in basic)

I can confirm all these observations. I can add that it happens when the file is loaded into PSPad.

Which PSPad features care about the end of a code block when loading a file? I would say syntax highlighters and code folding. I had corrupted files where code folding is not supported, that leaves syntax highlighters.

Has anybody ever seen a corrupted file with no syntax highlighting?