You can save a script as text, without compiling. The result is an ordinary text file (in UTF-8 encoding, with an initial BOM).

To do so, do either of the following:

• Choose File > Save, File > Save As, or File > Save A Copy As, and choose Text from the popup menu in the Save dialog.
• Choose File > Script Format > Text.

You may need to save a script without compiling for a variety of reasons:

• You want to save your work, but the script doesn’t compile (and you don’t have time to figure out why right now).
• You want to store the script in a form that’s guaranteed to be readable on another computer. (A compiled script file might fail to open on another computer for a variety of reasons.)

If you wish, you can specify line endings for a text file. To do so, use the Text Line Endings popup menu in the File > Save As dialog. In general you should not have to do this. If you leave the line endings setting at As Is (Mixed), line endings will be left alone. Any other setting will force line endings to be set at some specific value, and this can alter the functionality of your script (as explained here). (To view line endings as they are now in your script, you can show invisibles.)