Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!deimos!uxc!uwmcsd1!marque!uunet!mcvax!enea!dkuug!ncrsecp!jr From: jr@ncrsecp.Copenhagen.NCR.dk (Jakob Riis) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: fixing rm * (was: Worm/Passwords) Keywords: Make new commands, leave the shell as it is Message-ID: <1480@ncrsecp.Copenhagen.NCR.dk> Date: 29 Nov 88 13:31:19 GMT References: <1232@atari.UUCP> <564@comdesign.CDI.COM> <1670@ski.cs.vu.nl> <711@quintus.UUCP> Reply-To: jr@ncrsecp.Copenhagen.NCR.dk (Jakob Riis) Organization: NCR Systems Engineering Copenhagen Lines: 32 In article <711@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >In article <1670@ski.cs.vu.nl> biep@cs.vu.nl (J A Biep Durieux) writes: >>At the very least, 'rm * .o' should refuse to do anything when the file '.o' >>doesn't exist. > >I have posted a "del" command to comp.sources.unix which does this. EXACTLY !! Make new commands, don't mess around with the old ones. I agree that users need to be protected: Give them safer commands, Menu shells or PullDown help screens, nurse them good, but don't take away the alertness to the real thing - Unix is fast and dangerous, real progreammers reread their "rm" statements twice !! Don't let users expect that "rm -r *" will help them trim their filesystem by asking them to confirm each file. Teach a user that, and watch his face running on another system one day !! B.T.W: Think of the portability - 100.000+ shell scripts that needs to be rewritten. We have enough trouble with differences between BSD and V, Csh, Bsh, Ksh etc. as it is. (Just my 2 cents opinion) Jakob Riis ___________________________________ NCR Systems Engineering Copenhagen | | | " If Batman is so damned clever, | jr@ncrsecp.Copenhagen.NCR.com | why is he wearing his undershorts | or | outside his trousers ? " | ....mcvax!enea!dkuug!ncrsecp!jr | -Danish graffitti | |___________________________________|