What are the .lyx~ files for?

Question

What are the .Lyx~ files that Lyx is saving near my normal files for? They don't seem to be temp files as these are marked #*.lyx#, and they don't go away.

Answer 1

They are files created by your editor. Traditionally files that end with a tilde are to be seen as backups of files with the same name but without the tilde. See the wikipedia page for an explanation.

Answer 2

For the reference of those who stumble across this page in future, like me, here's a more detailed answer from the lyx users' mailing archive.

Apparently, the *.lyx~ files are used to recover the file when a save fails. The #*.lyx# files are used to automatically backup the file every so many minutes. The latter are automatically deleted when the file is saved. The former are not.