ZLOCK ZUNLOCK

-=basic OLC commands=-
-=see also: OLC, ZEDIT=-

Before doing anything to a zone, MAKE SURE TO LOCK IT FIRST! To save your
work, unlock the zone. That's what these two commands are for. When a zone
is locked, all of its related files (object files, room files, mob files,
and so forth) are read from disk and brought into memory. They may then be
safely edited. To save your changes to disk, unlock the zone. This then
overwrites each file related to that zone to disk, saving your changes in
the event of a crash, reboot, or whatever. Doing this a lot causes much
disk reading and writing, however, which can then cause disk wear, lag,
and, in extreme cases, crashes. So don't unlock and lock after every single
edit. We've all lost work from crashes in the past, and it sucks, but
sometimes you just can't help it.
-ZLOCK:
 zlock <zone#>
 This 'loads' the zone's information into memory, allowing the zone's
 files to be edited (using medit, oedit, redit, zedit, and so forth).
-ZUNLOCK:
 zunlock -save
 This unlocks the zone, saving all changes to disk.
 zunlock -nosave
 This unlocks the zone without overwriting the changes to disk (and
 throwing out any changes made).
 After unlocking (saving or not), you must lock the zone again to make
 further changes.
   Remember to ALWAYS lock the zone before editing, and to ALWAYS unlock
after you're finished or before you drop link or log off. Always!