Does it hurt programs to force quit them while launching?

Snowball

Snowball

Switched the Other Way
Or, for that matter, to force quit them in the middle of doing something?
Say I force quit Photoshop in the middle of a big render. Will it hurt the file being worked on, or damage Photoshop/it's prefs? Just wondering...sometimes I miss in the Dock when I'm in a hurry, and force quitting saves RAM but I'm worried it hurts programs...
 
You can't hurt the programs, but you can mess up their configuration or preferences files. This is especially true of programs that maintain databases as their source of information. In other words, I wouldn't force quite Entourage or Suitcase or their ilk. (I have had significant problems with Suitcase's databases getting corrupted).

You shouldn't have to worry about Photoshop damaging the file it is working on -- you will only lose whatever is in memory (the operations you have done since you last saved it out to disk). You may garble PS's preferences by doing so, however.

It's always preferrable to gracefully exit a program rather than giving it the equivalent of a kill -9
 
I wouldn't force quit a file in Photoshop while rendering. You could lose the file.

I forced quit my wife once, cost me a fortune.
 
Thanks for the info, it proved what I knew all along...force quitting wives sounds dangerous...
 
Ahh, a break from the normal thread reanimator, now we have the nonsensical thread reanimator!

To get into his groove:

McSedgley said:
I've got homer simpson mousemat too - the one where he's asleep on the sofa with a can o beer?
Click to expand...

I have a rather nice first edition of Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the World by Haruki Murakami. :)
 
when you quit a program, it saves all the stuff you changed in it (prefences etc) to it's .plist file or similar. if you force quit it, it doesn't save these thing, meaning that when you next open it, it's reverted to how it was when you last closed it successfully.

mine's round and dotty. with additional gravy stains as of last night when i knocked over pie an chips n gravy.
 
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