In case you haven’t figured it out from my poetic style of writing, I am a computer programmer. I do most of my programming in a SCO Unix environment, a target I seldom hesitate to shower with disdain and dirty looks.

Today I’ve been doing some system cleaning and, for some reason completely not unbeknownst to me (and I’ll never tell you why), I found a file called “-o” on my system. I determined to remove this malignantly named interloper.

I drew my trusty rm command and struck:

Blocked! This file is a sneaky one, masquerading as a command option. I struck again with double quotes: Foiled again! I tried to escape: Blast! No escape! I pulled from my “vast” repertoire: My efforts had become the shell prompt equivalent of beating my head against a wall. I was not going to be defeated by a UNIX file, especially not one with a puny annoying name. I needed a plan, a diversion, a way to catch this nuisance unprepared.

I opened up ftp and waited; waited for the file to stop watching me, to let its guard down. (This takes approximately 0.32 ms under SCO Unix.) I opened up an ftp connection…to my own system! Quickly, I typed and ended the line with a emphatic pinky on the Enter key.

Victory! Shouts of “DELE command successful” echoed throughout the system. I had freed them from their “-o”ppressor. All thanks to the help of ftp: File Termination Protocol.