[MBCook]

> why do we programmers always feel we need to apologize for something that we did quickly, but has been running without incident for a number of years.

The script is only treating the symptom, not the problem.

It would be better to detect the files before they waste an hour of time, so you could tell the user instead of having them silently disappear. Maybe there is something you could do to fix the files. The programmer part of me says there is a real fix that needs writing.

It's obviously a great script if it's worked that long. Who knows how long it would take to track down and fix the bug(s) causing the issue. If they haven't needed to fix the bug in all these years just writing that script was obviously a good decision.

[zaroth]

> If they haven't needed to fix the bug in all these years just writing that script was obviously a good decision.

Exactly this. There are an unbounded number of bugs which will cause this single symptom. I think detecting the symptom is exactly the right solution.

[kbenson]

In theory. In reality, after treating one or two causes, the occurrence rate may fall to once a month or year.

I agree that mitigating the problem is a good first step though.