Should We Abolish User Access to rm? (2011)

Re:Should We Abolish User Access to rm? (2011) by verbatim on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @04:02PM (#6129627)

Leaving aside technical arguments against doing this, I don't think it would solve the problem anyway. Users would inevitably decide that they want a real "remove" operation (because yours is now wasting their disk space, etc.), and teach themselves to call their new fancy "really_rm" alias. And then just accidentally delete files with that instead of "rm".

(Anyone ever gotten too used to shift-Delete in Windows? Yeah...)

Instead, automate backups or file system snapshots.

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Re:Should We Abolish User Access to rm? (2011) by takluyver on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @05:46PM (#6130260)

Yes, in both Linux and Windows, I've got used to hitting shift-delete, return, when I want to delete a file. And yes, at times I've done that only to immediately realise I'd got the wrong file.

I think GMail has this right: instead of a confirmation, it does what you asked for, and has an obvious non-modal undo button. Also, because I know things in the trash will be discarded after 30 days, I don't feel any pressure to 'really delete' them myself.

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