Man 'deletes his entire company' with one line of code

A businessman accidentally deleted all records of his company after keying in one line of mistaken code.

Hosting provider Marco Marsala accidentally commanded his PC to destroy everything in his servers, removing all trace of his website and those of his customers – more than 1,500 people.

According to The Independent, Marsala took to a forum called Server Fault to try and find a solution for his error but rather than receive help, he learnt of the fatal blow he'd struck on his business.

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The paper adds that he'd mistakenly used "rm –rf": a "basic piece of code that will delete everything it is told to" and so famous within IT circles for its destructive capabilities that it has become a running joke among coders.

Normally, the code can be used to delete specific parts of a server or computer. However, as Marsala didn't specify what to delete, he allowed the code free rein to chomp his entire business away.

It gets worse – the code also destroyed every backup.

"You don't need technical advice, you need to call your Lawyer," wrote one user, while others pointed out how it would require a series of errors committed simultaneously to actually delete every shred of data in one blow. Backups hosted on a main server aren't "what I would call backups", he was told.

"If ever there was a time you wish you could click 'undo', this would be it", says the Daily Telegraph.

There could be a silver lining though, says Engadget. A specialist has since waded into the destruction and found a way to recover some of the files – but at a hefty price.