hello,
obviously, bit of a noob. i am using arduino ide 0018 on ubuntu 9.10. i have made a terrible mistake and need some help desperately! i worked on a sketch for over a month, uploading as i made changes. today i rebooted, assuming, rather stupidly, that arduino saves sketches when you upload to the board. i opened my sketch, and there is only a very old version, losing hours and hours of work. does the ide store the c file anywhere before compiling and uploading? is there any way i can get my code back? thanks for your help!
chris
Get it back from you workstation backup.
As far as I know there is no copies of older sketch versions. The IDE only saves the current sketch version.
If you never saved the file and no backup available.
You need to code it again.
I suggest that you think about a backup solution.
sigh.... that is what i was afraid of. i do not have backups, prolly a good idea now that you mention it 
i just figured that when you hit upload, it saved your sketch. obviously this was my mistake, but maybe some visible clarification on this mite be good for beginners. thanks for your reply,
chris
i do not have backups, prolly a good idea now that you mention it
No "probably" about it; if you have a computer system, you should have a backup system for it. An automated system to a separate backup fileserver is likely the best method for home usage, but even a large external USB thumbdrive or hard drive can work in a pinch. Whether you are using Windows, a Mac, or *nix, you can set up a simple automated backup process using the tools that come with the system or that can be found easily (and generally for free) online.
With hard drives and other devices so cheap, you really don't have an excuse. Heck, I saw an ad for a 2TB SATA hard drive from Newegg this morning, for under $120.00 - add one of those to your system and back up to it! I remember the day when $120.00 couldn't get you an extra 256K of RAM...
Live and learn; we've all likely been there, but for those that haven't - GET A BACKUP SOLUTION - you will thank me later (believe me, the heartbreak isn't worth it, especially if you lose more than a few K of C code).