Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!acorn!moncam!loki From: loki@moncam.uucp (Never Kid A Kidder) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: rm * Message-ID: Date: 17 Jan 90 13:11:02 GMT References: <9001152004.AA04327@frip.WV.TEK.COM> <584@celia.UUCP> Sender: loki@moncam.co.uk Organization: (n) The process of becoming an organ. Lines: 18 In-reply-to: keith@celia.UUCP's message of 15 Jan 90 23:27:55 GMT In article <584@celia.UUCP> keith@celia.UUCP (Keith Goldfarb) writes: Anyone ever notice that ls uses the '?' character to display garbage characters, and the shell takes '?' as a wild card?? I once worked with someone who did an ls and saw a bunch of files that started with "???". He calmly typed "rm ???*" to remove them. I did this once. It was the beginning of my second year at university, and even though I'd been using Bourne shell for a whole year, I had somehow never encountered the `?'. It serves me right for not being inquisitive enough (there was no official teaching of the shell until the second year, when we were actually taught the mechanisms used to implement things like pipes, redirection &c.) Sad thing was, it was a week's worth of coursework I deleted. Naturally they had a backup, so I only lost a day's worth, but at the time, I was too panicked to think!!!