recovering deleted files

[rikona]

I just did something stupid! I was cleaning up a very large number of
what I thought were duplicate files and putting them where it made
more sense. BUT - I had 2 folders in different parts of the tree with
the same name. Under those 2 folders I had what i thought was a link
to the other location. So, I had 2 folders and 2 links with the same
name. As I was moving files, I noticed that a large number were
reported as already being in the destination folder, and I thought
they were duplicates - so I shift-deleted them [not to trash] as I
usually do. Trash is empty.

BUT it turns out I had set up circular links back to the same folder.
This was the reason why there were so many apparent 'duplicates'
reported - they were not really dupes because they were already there,
so to speak. When I finally went to the folder to see the results of
my extensive moves, the folder was essentially almost empty. I had
just lost a huge number of extremely important files - months worth of
work....

So - what can be done to recover them. The comp is still on and I am
not going to touch it, which might overwrite the deleted files. What
can I do to get back these files?

Thanks much, in advance...

 rikona