<b_jonas> slashlearn block device/Block devices are a concession made in Unix to make raw hard disks and magnetic tape have a similar interface to regular files and terminals. Since magnetic tapes can\'t write individual bytes, only entire blocks, the interface isn\'t exactly the same, thus the dreaded dd obs= option was born.

#!/bin/sh
id=$1
expr "$1" + 0 >/dev/null 2>&1 || exit 1
head -n $((id-1)) quotes >quotes.new
tail -n +$((id+1)) quotes >>quotes.new
diff quotes quotes.new >/dev/null && exit 1
printf "*poof*%s" "$(quote $id | cut -d')' -f2-)"
mv quotes.new quotes