Long time ago – working in DOS. End of a project and in the wee small hours. Being a cautious chap I decided to back up all of the source code before going home.
It was in the days of 8 inch (yes 8 inch) floppy disks but they had limited space. Obvious thing to do is to delete all of the .BAK backup copies of the source files which are created automatically by the editor.
The command is straight forward :
> DEL *.BAK
I make one tiny mistake and typed :
> DEL *,BAK
Those of you that remember DOS will know what happed next. It asked me to confirm, which I immediately did. The disk whirred and the light flashed and the following message was displayed :
> UNKNOWN COMMAND “BAK”
In that instant I knew what I had done. Having typed a comma (,) instead of a full stop (.) I had deleted weeks of work in a few short seconds. Boy was I sick
