Comment On The Representative File

It's probably just a component of the NiggaPlease test module.

This was probably just someone trying a file-writing function.
Nothing too shocking!!

I don't think it did work.

I'd like to share with you the following file listing:

[sysusr:/data/script/cfg]$ ls -l

total 136

-rw-r-----   1 sysusr sysusr      66 Jun 18 17:22 Please do not change the 600 seconds setting or things go.BANG

-rw-r-----   1 sysusr sysusr     282 Apr 18 14:40 httpd.conf.tt2

-rwxr-----   1 sysusr sysusr    4455 Jul 27 13:32 live-monitor.cfg

-rw-r-----   1 sysusr sysusr    1641 Apr 18 14:43 log4perl.cfg

-rw-r-----   1 sysusr sysusr     209 Aug  6 13:45 native-scp.cfg

-rw-r-----   1 sysusr sysusr     745 Jul 17 11:23 server.cfg

-rw-r-----   1 sysusr sysusr    2626 Jul 13 16:01 transfer.cfg

[sysusr:/data/script/cfg]$

I have done stuff similar to this when I was trying to figure out how to write to files and such when I was first learning. Don't really see the problem here other than just going huh, what were they doing...

I've seen a lot of dummy.txt files, containing "I do nothing" myself.

Ross:

I have done stuff similar to this when I was trying to figure out how to write to files and such when I was first learning. Don't really see the problem here other than just going huh, what were they doing...

There is a presumption that WTFs take place on production servers. There shouldn't really be testing and playing around in the production environment.

Not a WTF, just someone either trying to write to or read from a text file.

I'm suprised the language was as clean as it was.

http://www.BlueWhiteFootball.com

akatherder:

There is a presumption that WTFs take place on production servers. There shouldn't really be testing and playing around in the production environment.

Maybe the file was created during development and accidently got added to the svn/cvs repository. Not ideal, but certainly not a wtf!

Alex:

Instead, they take people from within the division that have programming acclimations and stick them on the programming team.

Did the spell checker misunderstand your attempt at "aspiration", or does your dictionary have more definitions of "acclimation" than mine does?

I've seen a lot of dummy.txt files, containing "I do nothing" myself.

...And sometimes such files are needed.

Sometimes a program expects to find a directory, no matter if it's empty or not. Of course it could be argued, that the program itself should be clever enough to create the directory if it doesn't exist, but on the other hand, descriptivedirname/dummy.txt tells user, that "maybe I can / should put something in that dir..."

That in itself isn't the problem, but the cure for it. Some bad (un)archivers have a really bad habit of removing empty directories with default settings. I think at least zip is one of them. Of course people should use better archive format instead, but for some reason we seem to be stuck with that...

Most MAME distributions have those "directory preserving dummy files"

I've learned two things about the programmer:
1) He has a sense of humor.
2) He's ever so slightly optimistic.
After all, he could have put something like "this'll never work" or "I hate my job." Kudos for staying strong.

Line 3: Thesaurus failure.

To me the file indicates the "Programmer" had a lot of trouble getting file IO to work. You usually don't resort to pleading with the computer on your first few attempts.

It's not a real WTF unless removing the file breaks the application!

And possibly sets the server on fire.

this highly remembers me of this funny story about a magic/more-magic button http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/magic-story.html

Jupp3:

I've seen a lot of dummy.txt files, containing "I do nothing" myself.

...And sometimes such files are needed.

Sometimes a program expects to find a directory, no matter if it's empty or not. Some bad (un)archivers have a really bad habit of removing empty directories with default settings.

Those are exactly the reasons why i've used dummy.txt files, in fact

Jupp3:

I've seen a lot of dummy.txt files, containing "I do nothing" myself.

...And sometimes such files are needed.

Sometimes a program expects to find a directory, no matter if it's empty or not. Some bad (un)archivers have a really bad habit of removing empty directories with default settings.

Some CVS clients also remove empty directories.

CAPTCHA: doom!

Jeremy:

akatherder:

There is a presumption that WTFs take place on production servers. There shouldn't really be testing and playing around in the production environment.

Maybe the file was created during development and accidently got added to the svn/cvs repository. Not ideal, but certainly not a wtf!

This is exactly my thought also.

That smells like unit testing to me. There are many types of small modules that require a dummy file for reading once in a while. Everything from simple routines that read lines from text files to more complicated archiving and file management.

I had to come up with an entire directory of dummy data once, to test the function of a game data archive library I wrote.

Gosh, I'm impressed ! A true wtf indeed ! Unbelievable ! Behold - a forgotten dumb text file !

his division’s IT department doesn’t seem to hire regular programmers. Instead, they take people from within the division that have programming acclimations and stick them on the programming team.

We're far too savvy to allow amateurs to write our code. Instead we let them tell us what to write. If they think they need to set each customer up as a warehouse, that's what we have to do, or the IT director (who can't even spell SAP and doesn't know a warehouse from whorehouse) says we're not customer focussed.

Many here have probably seen those huge, "inconceivable" file/directory trees that have copious files of unknown function. When you see a please.txt and don't remove it, and then another, over time it grows into a monster. Please remove files that aren't in use whenever possible!

oh, yeah, the good old

mkdir -p some/{very,long,list}/of/{complex,convitatorial,expressions/that/end}/up/being/{un,manageable}/$(date '+%Y%m%d)/archive

Someone You Know:

Alex:

Instead, they take people from within the division that have programming acclimations and stick them on the programming team.

Did the spell checker misunderstand your attempt at "aspiration", or does your dictionary have more definitions of "acclimation" than mine does?

I think he was going for "acclimatisations"...

Acclimatization is the physiological adaptations the body undergoes in response to a change in external environments. Among these changes are altitude, temperature, humidity, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acclimatisation

the word he was looking for is "inclination"

Perhaps the acclimations are along the lines of high caffeine intake and cast iron butt that can withstand extended periods of sitting on an office chair.

I thought it was acclamations -- folks looking for the adulation that follows top coders like Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and Tim Berners-Lee.

Martini:

Someone You Know:

Alex:

Instead, they take people from within the division that have programming acclimations and stick them on the programming team.

Did the spell checker misunderstand your attempt at "aspiration", or does your dictionary have more definitions of "acclimation" than mine does?

I think he was going for "acclimatisations"...

Acclimatization is the physiological adaptations the body undergoes in response to a change in external environments. Among these changes are altitude, temperature, humidity, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acclimatisation

Yes, and acclimation means exactly the same thing. But neither of them make any sense in that sentence. Actually, as much as it pains me to say it, I agree with Jim Bob: he was probably shooting for "inclination" and...suffered severe brain damage or something.

I wonder what the time stamp on the .txt file was. Since the programmer was pleading, it may have been in the wee hours close to a release date. Those way too early, way too late times in your coding life usually allow us to see what kind of coders we are, what kind of system we have, and I would bet you - that this poor slob was in the office at 3am trying to fix a file IO issue right before shipping.

All evidence I have from times like that, say lots worse - but usually are worse: asd.txt > asd (who knows what that means?)

.keep is my usual practice for such things.

Shouldn't the file contain

This File Intentionally Left Blank

Someone You Know:

Yes, and acclimation means exactly the same thing. But neither of them make any sense in that sentence. Actually, as much as it pains me to say it, I agree with Jim Bob: he was probably shooting for "inclination" and...suffered severe brain damage or something.

I think we need a poll here.

All those who actually care, please say "Aye".

Why is the cursor at the end of the line? If the file was just opened and screencapped, the cursor would still be on column 1.

And people think Windoze sux!

David:

I'd like to share with you the following file listing:

[sysusr:/data/script/cfg]$ ls -l

total 136

-rw-r-----   1 sysusr sysusr      66 Jun 18 17:22 Please do not change the 600 seconds setting or things go.BANG

-rw-r-----   1 sysusr sysusr     282 Apr 18 14:40 httpd.conf.tt2

-rwxr-----   1 sysusr sysusr    4455 Jul 27 13:32 live-monitor.cfg

-rw-r-----   1 sysusr sysusr    1641 Apr 18 14:43 log4perl.cfg

-rw-r-----   1 sysusr sysusr     209 Aug  6 13:45 native-scp.cfg

-rw-r-----   1 sysusr sysusr     745 Jul 17 11:23 server.cfg

-rw-r-----   1 sysusr sysusr    2626 Jul 13 16:01 transfer.cfg

[sysusr:/data/script/cfg]$

It can sort of make sense - if a user is good at adapting... but, I agree with the first poster in that it probably should have read aspirations.

LG:

Some CVS clients also remove empty directories.

They do this because there's no way to delete directories in CVS, so the only way to avoid getting your checkout cluttered with empty obsolete directories is ignoring all empty directories.

Is this "wtf" what they refer to as "autistic humor"?

> please.txt’s
-----------^^^--
WTF is this?

Omg:

> please.txt’s
-----------^^^--
WTF is this?

It's called a Grocer's Apostrophe, and it's one of the most common forms of idiocy in the English-speaking world.

Jeremy:

akatherder:

There is a presumption that WTFs take place on production servers. There shouldn't really be testing and playing around in the production environment.

Maybe the file was created during development and accidently got added to the svn/cvs repository. Not ideal, but certainly not a wtf!

What makes you think they even did use some type of source control ?

dummy:

Jupp3:

I've seen a lot of dummy.txt files, containing "I do nothing" myself.

...And sometimes such files are needed.

Sometimes a program expects to find a directory, no matter if it's empty or not. Some bad (un)archivers have a really bad habit of removing empty directories with default settings.

Those are exactly the reasons why i've used dummy.txt files, in fact

I once had a bug with cramfs (Compressing RAM File System) where it would silently merge all directories with identical contents and attributes into a single inode. This did horrible things to certain utilities that used inode numbers to detect when they had somehow recursively stumbled across a directory inode twice.

The empty directories had to exist in advance because they were to be used as mount points during boot (cramfs is a read-only filesystem used early in the boot process, so creating the directories as required was not an option). The workaround was to put a distinctly named empty file into each directory, so mkcramfs would be forced to create two different directory inodes.

Someone You Know:

Martini:

Someone You Know:

Alex:

Instead, they take people from within the division that have programming acclimations and stick them on the programming team.

Did the spell checker misunderstand your attempt at "aspiration", or does your dictionary have more definitions of "acclimation" than mine does?

I think he was going for "acclimatisations"...

Acclimatization is the physiological adaptations the body undergoes in response to a change in external environments. Among these changes are altitude, temperature, humidity, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acclimatisation

Yes, and acclimation means exactly the same thing. But neither of them make any sense in that sentence. Actually, as much as it pains me to say it, I agree with Jim Bob: he was probably shooting for "inclination" and...suffered severe brain damage or something.

I'm inclined to another view

Jupp3:

That in itself isn't the problem, but the cure for it. Some bad (un)archivers have a really bad habit of removing empty directories with default settings. I think at least zip is one of them. Of course people should use better archive format instead, but for some reason we seem to be stuck with that...

Many programs can extract ZIP archives. Just because some of them use bad default settings doesn't mean ZIP is a poor format.

Which "zip" unarchiver do you mean, anyway? PKZip, WinZip, Info-ZIP... ?

Kevin Kofler:

They do this because there's no way to delete directories in CVS, so the only way to avoid getting your checkout cluttered with empty obsolete directories is ignoring all empty directories.

And that's one of the many CVS annoyances that Subversion was designed to fix. I think the SVN developers did a great job making a tool that is easy to use for people with CVS experience, has more and more useful features, and makes many tasks much simpler at the same time.

Not to mention that as an admin, you don't have to give people shell access to your repository server when using Subversion.