# Developer cleverly shrank 2,600 lines of C into a six-line script but still ending up losing sleep

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/developer-cleverly-shrank-2600-lines-of-c-into-a-six-line-script-but-still-ending-up-losing-sleep/
- Published: 2026-11-13T06:27:00+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-13T06:36:39+00:00
- Original publisher: The Register
- Original article: https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/11/13/developer-cleverly-shrank-2600-lines-of-c-into-a-six-line-script-but-still-ending-up-losing-sleep/5309264
- Topics: Software, Technology

## Key points

- Tim replaced 2,650 lines of C with a six-line script.
- Network failures still triggered two or three alerts nightly.
- A colleague’s unreliable pager handover prolonged the disruption.

## Summary

A telecoms support worker, known as Tim, replaced a 2,650-line C data-transfer programme with a six-line shell script after discovering the programme contained its own version of FTP. The rewrite made the overnight job simpler, but unreliable network connections triggered repeated pager alerts, showing how a technical fix can leave the underlying operational problem untouched.

Tim said writing the script took eight hours, including time spent using the pre-web WAIS system to find and read Unix source code. The script gathered data from telephone switches, cleaned it and sent it to a mainframe, paging him after three failed connection attempts. After two or three alerts a night for two weeks, a colleague took over the pager but often failed to keep it nearby or switched on, so Tim took it back and faced several more weeks of interruptions.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.