Re:Undergrad thought he had mastered Unix in weeks. Then he ...
by yjftsjthsd-h on Monday November 18, 2024 @03:24PM
(#42176524)
I'd give 2 responses depending on what you mean by that:
1. As sibling comment notes, at least GNU rm does make some effort to protect you.
2. I would suggest that any further protection is just going to get in the way. For example, I've run into systems that aliased rm to `rm -I`:
-I prompt once before removing more than three files, or when removing recursively; less intrusive than -i, while still giving protection against most mistakes
but I almost always promptly override that because sometimes yes I do actually want to delete a lot of files in a lot of places and I am not having this argument with the machine.
Or as has been put more elegantly:
“Unix was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.”
— Douglas Gwyn
1. As sibling comment notes, at least GNU rm does make some effort to protect you.
2. I would suggest that any further protection is just going to get in the way. For example, I've run into systems that aliased rm to `rm -I`:
but I almost always promptly override that because sometimes yes I do actually want to delete a lot of files in a lot of places and I am not having this argument with the machine.Or as has been put more elegantly:
“Unix was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.” — Douglas Gwyn