Don't delete the $
Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2008 6:37 am
I worked at a local phone company (one of the bells) a long time ago and had fairly deep access to the systems. One such system allowed for pretty much direct access to the account setup files for customers. This meant that I could directly modify records in the system and save them. The account changes were instant and there was no data validation. This meant that you could seriously do some damage if you messed something up. It also meant that you could pretty much setup a phone line any way you wanted to. We used it to make a single phone number ring at two different addresses and some other neat stuff.
At the bottom of each record, on the last line, there was a single $. Everyone who knew what it did and why it was there refused to tell me what its purpose was, but told me to NEVER, EVER under ANY circumstances remove the $. One guy said he removed it from an account once and it messed things up so bad it took him a solid week to fix it. This makes me think it not only screwed up that account, but a whole mess of accounts at the switch.
My question for anyone who has worked with anything similar.. What the hell did the $ do?
At the bottom of each record, on the last line, there was a single $. Everyone who knew what it did and why it was there refused to tell me what its purpose was, but told me to NEVER, EVER under ANY circumstances remove the $. One guy said he removed it from an account once and it messed things up so bad it took him a solid week to fix it. This makes me think it not only screwed up that account, but a whole mess of accounts at the switch.
My question for anyone who has worked with anything similar.. What the hell did the $ do?