comic-relief

Buffer v. disk - a visceral lesson.

Eli Kent

01 Aug 2025 — 1 min read

Photos by Esmihel Muhammed / Pexels and Fernando Lavin / Usplash

TL;DR: Turns out, “unsaved” really means “nonexistent” — I chased a phantom file for 10 minutes.

I created and opened in VS Code a .ps1 file from the terminal.

  PS C:\Users\EliKent\Documents\WindowsPowerShell> 
  code 
  sandbox.ps1

But I didn’t actually save it — I just started typing. So the file only lived in memory. And I spent the next 10 minutes chasing a ghost.

I listed the contents of the current working directory:

PS C:\Users\EliKent\Documents\WindowsPowerShell> ls

    
    Directory: C:\Users\EliKent\Documents\WindowsPowerShell


Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
d-----         2/24/2022   1:13 PM                Modules
d-----         2/24/2022   1:05 PM                Scripts
-a----         7/31/2025   4:47 PM           4775 Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

Not there.

Next I listed hidden files with -Force:

PS C:\Users\EliKent\Documents\WindowsPowerShell> ls -Force

    
    Directory: C:\Users\EliKent\Documents\WindowsPowerShell


Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
d-----         2/24/2022   1:13 PM                Modules
d-----         2/24/2022   1:05 PM                Scripts
-a----         7/31/2025   4:47 PM           4775 Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

Still not there.

Then I searched for the file:

    PS C:\Users\EliKent\Documents\WindowsPowerShell> 
    Get-ChildItem -Filter "sandbox.ps1"
    -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -Force
    PS C:\Users\EliKent\Documents\WindowsPowerShell>

Nada. Zip. Zero.

And finally, I tried setting the file's property as Hidden = False:

    PS C:\Users\EliKent\Documents\WindowsPowerShell> 
    Set-ItemProperty -Path .\sandbox.ps1 -Name IsHidden -Value $false

    Set-ItemProperty : Cannot find path 'C:\Users\EliKent\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\sandbox.ps1' because it does not exist.
At line:1 char:1
+ Set-ItemProperty -Path .\sandbox.ps1 -Name IsHidden -Value $false

Still nothing. That file did not exist.

Finally, Google Code Assist suggested I save the .ps1 file:

Save Ctrl+S

Success!

Lesson: Until you save, you're living in RAM.

Tools Used:

PowerShell
VS Code
Google Code Assist

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