Subject: Re: Recursive grep (where is limfree defined?)
To: Terry Moore <tmm@mcci.com>
From: Brett Lymn <blymn@awadi.com.au>
List: current-users
Date: 02/05/1996 13:38:52
According to Terry Moore:
>
> I've never been able to come 
>up with a good reason (other than that it eliminates one check 
>in the directory entry creation code) why an OS should accept 
>file names including control characters such 
>as '\n', '\b' and the like.
>

Not much of a justification but it did allow me to play a neat trick
on one of my workmates.  We were all using vt220 terminals, I created
a shell script whose name was the escape sequence for moving the
cursor up one line then to the beginning of then line and clearing it.
This had the effect, apart from a '*', of completely hiding the file
from a casual 'ls -las' (yes, I do know how you can see the file.
Part of the fun is knowing your victims habits and working within them ;-)
He never really worked out what I had done to him which was quite an
achievement as this guy was pretty sharp :-)

-- 
Brett Lymn, Computer Systems Administrator, AWA Defence Industries
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