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After upgrading to BBEdit 9, I've happily left TextMate behind and returned to my favorite bare-bones IDE for Rails development. (I'm planning to share some tips on this topic this weekend.)

I just came across a very strange bug that crashes BBEdit, and thought I'd share a workaround in case someone else has this problem. The bug report has already been filed.

Operating environment:
BBEdit version 9.0 (1320) of Wed, 27 Aug 2008
Mac OS X 10.5.4 Build 9E17

To reproduce:

• Create a new file
• Set its type to Ruby using the menu at the bottom of the window
• Type (not paste) the following, exactly as you see it here:
  

  "tag-#

BBEdit will now invoke the spinning beach ball of death, start consuming massive CPU cycles, and never recover. Note that I have text completion triggers turned OFF, so that's probably not the problem.

The workaround for this is (and any similar string that brings this on) is open the Scratchpad window (Window -> Show Scratchpad), type your string in there, and paste it back into your Ruby file.

I should point out that a couple of minor issues aside, I'm incredibly happy with this upgrade. And given my history with Bare Bones, I expect fixes to be forthcoming quickly.

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