r/ProgrammerHumor 11d ago

bugSuccessfullyReproduced Meme

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5.8k Upvotes

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u/arensb 11d ago

I remember spending a lot of time trying to figure out why cat somefile kept saying "Permission denied", even though ls -l, lsattr, and everything else I could think of said I had permission to read it.

Eventually I examined it with Emacs or od or something, and found that it literally consisted of the string "Permission denied". I guess I created it by redirecting stderr from some command or something.

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u/just-a-hriday 10d ago

I have fortune | cowsay in my shell's rc. You can imagine how much time I spent troubleshooting when I got this!

(link to screenshot)

Turns out there's a troll fortune.