Re: Removing garbage in files system by inode number

Mark H. Wood (mwood@IUPUI.Edu)
Tue, 2 Nov 1999 13:07:28 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Dale Amon wrote:
> Ah and then there is the heart attack inducing
> trick we played on a new systems programmer back
> in the days of RSX-11m. I think we created a couple
> exectable scripts such that he ran one and it appeared
> to do the RSX equivalent of rm -rf *, ie pip *.*;*/DE
> except that we had also substituted pip in his
> search path so it actually moved all his work safely
> (and quietly) elsewhere first....

Long ago in a timesharing system far, far away, TOPS-10 PIP would let you
create files with arbitrary bit-patterns for names using a funky octal
notation. We had some fun speculating on whether anyone in the lab,
confronted with a file named *.*, would be dumb enough to enter DEL *.*
before realizing what he'd done. :-}

I actually needed this feature on one occasion, when something or other
had created a file whose name contained a period. (Not the period
separating the name from the extension; this period was *in* the name.)

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood@IUPUI.Edu
Quick!  What's the SIXBIT for period?




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