Occasionally when using Linux (or Mac OS X) I’ll notice a tongue-in-cheek output message from a utility. Today, it was ‘file‘, a program that uses magic numbers and other tricks to tell you about the contents of a file:


[brock@stilgar][Darwin]-(~/Workspace/RvPacing/bridge/flma2memfem)-> file bridge_w_surf.flma
bridge_w_surf.flma: ASCII text, with very long lines
[brock@stilgar][Darwin]-(~/Workspace/RvPacing/bridge/flma2memfem)->


Emphasis mine. Thanks for the commentary, file.

ADDENDUM: Just now, tar gave me this little message because I forgot to provide some source data:

[brock@stilgar][Darwin]-(~/models)-> tar cfjv bridge_iso.tar.bz2
tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive
Try `tar --help' or `tar --usage' for more information.


That one, I’ve seen before.