🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <D63qp4.90r@world.std.com> aml@world.std.com (Andrew M. Langmead) writes:

   Stefan 'Stetson' Skoglund <sp2stes1@ida.his.se> writes:
   >You have to decide whom is gonna do this check.
   >rm or the shell ??

   There are two things that "rm" could do.

   Count the number of files in the directory, and see if they match the
   number of command line arguements. This would prevent "rm *" disasters.

How are you going to do that?

The Unix shell usually does wildcard expansion; that is, it translates
'*' into all of the files into the directory.  They become the
command-line arguments.

   Check if every file name is valid before unlinking. This would prevent
   "rm * .o" disasters.

And remove the usefulness of 'rm' in shell scripts, Makefiles, etc.

I am of the school which believes that trying to patch this stuff over
tends to make it a lot worse.

Plus, how are you going to convince rm that you -really- want to do
this?  Most likely you'll need another command which will allow you to
delete every file if you want, and then you'll get used to that and
make the mistake again.

I don't think the developers of the Hurd are all that interested in
keeping newbies from screwing themselves.

	christian
--
Christian Longshore Claiborn - opinions my own
"Look at this show-off, Hancock.  Pretty flamboyant signature
for an insurance man." -- Ben Franklin (Stan Freberg)