Aucbvax.4048
fa.unix-wizards
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards
Fri Sep 25 16:06:27 1981
Re: rm and shell metacharacters
>From obrien@RAND-UNIX Fri Sep 25 12:31:35 1981
	We have a background daemon which runs at 4am every day, and
removes all files either beginning or ending with certain strings; locally,
beginning with "," or ending with ".bak".

	This took more thought and experiment than something this trivial
has any right to.  "," is a compromise: shows up clumped at the beginnings
of "ls" listings, and being at the beginning of the filename, can't be
chopped off because the name is already too long (the problem with ".bak",
which we used to use).

        One fellow had a private "rm" which capitalized AND set the high-
order bit in the first character of a filename.  He had his own "exp" to
expunge such things later.  It never caught on.  (This was Bruce Borden,
who designed and wrote the first crack at the MH mail system.)