Oh man. The hilarity of it all. Gotta share this story with the world, I nearly fell off my ergonomical chair.
It all started with Paolo exclaiming he had two files called the same thing in a directory. Cue the techie boys springing from their chairs to be the first to show off their prowess in fixing Unix 101 problems.
Dom leapt from his seat, tearing his shirt off as he flew over my desk, revealing the SA logo emblazoned across his tight-fitting vest and landed with his fingers already over the keyboard. "A-ha!" he exclaimed, "Let's get that ls command on the go, redirecting to a file using the greater than sign.". Paolo delayed, fearing the wrath of the geek gods if he were to accept help for this FAQ covered problem so easily. "ls -lf will show hidden characters" he said. The look of victory slipped from Dom's face as he felt confused about the success of such an obscure flag. He felt that he should have known about that one, but not convinced enough about it's potential for failure to dismiss it out of hand. Better to keep quite and wait for the results before continuing his "greater than" tirade.
The room froze as Paolo executed his command. As the results were displayed on the screen it was clear that he was wrong. No special characters had been revealed and he deflated and assumed the prone position, taking the subservant pose to Dom's obvious status in the pack. "ls greater than filename" repeated Dom, his place now assured due to the guaranteed success of this well-trodden route. Paolo complied, crestfallen, as Paul, who had crept slowly into the background to pick off the weak, looked on. But wait. the file showed none of the expected ^ led symbols, no ^H to satisfy the blood lust. Not even a trailing space, obvious to the trained eye. The difference, as it turns out, was a simple 1 vs l error, a schoolboy error, not even FAQ-worthy.
The group dispersed, giggling nervously, accepting the all-round loss of this engagement. After the wounds were dressed, the memories faded and the great god google browsed, they would return.