plug@arcticmail.com wrote:

> I've always found this script VERY useful for
> issues like this.  Well, maybe not as useful as
> "rm -rf" or "dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hdz1", but...

I had a php script that had a command like this:

exec( "rm -rf $base_dir/$sub_dir*.*" );

It happend that I really wanted "$_basedir/$_subdir*.*".  Needless to say, the result wasn't quite what was expected.  I wouldn't call
the result "useful" as it ended up literally frying both my hard drives!  After about nine hours, somebody noticed the machine was
making quite a racket.  He got on the console and noticed it was stuck in a loop, still banging away on the disks.  He rebooted the
machine and while it sort of came up, the drives were toasted.  I had to throw them out.

-David Schwartz