Re:NGS: Next Generation Unix Shell
by CaptSpify on Thursday April 21, 2016 @10:23AM
(#11542341)
Although I kind of agree with you, I'll play the devil's-advocate: If you actually care about the file, it should have a backup that you can restore from anyway. And, depending on the file, that backup should be source-control.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
If the solution to the problem relies on human beings being fully-informed, entirely competent, and never making mistakes-- it's not a very good solution, IMO.
Yes, people should maintain backups. But if people don't, for whatever reason (maybe they've never heard the word "backup" before; maybe they typed the wrong command and thought they had backups all along, etc.) shouldn't be screwed if something goes wrong.
Backups are good. More frequent backups are even better.
I have btrfs snapshots run on the fileservers at 10 minute intervals. Which, of course, captures the entire filesystem state, not just files that you have deleted by accident.
I know you're playing devil's advocate, but that attitude is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Backups are non-trivial enough that many people don't set them up correctly if at all; and even if they do, a restore can take some work. I think it's perfectly reasonable to have relatively painless alternative (e.g. "undo_rm") as an extra layer of safety.