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Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 12:22:53 +0100
From: Ceri Davies <ceri@submonkey.net>
To: Max Laier <max@love2party.net>
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Subject: Re: Protection from the dreaded "rm -fr /"
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On Sat, Oct 02, 2004 at 11:23:52AM +0200, Max Laier wrote:
> [ Sorry to be so negative ... ]
>=20
> At very least you should consider to error out silently as POSIX requires=
 "-f"=20
> to be silent. Other than that you should really look into the standards a=
nd=20
> what they way about rm and friends.

Are you sure?  From the RATIONALE section of
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/rm.html:

    "It is less clear that error messages regarding files that cannot be
     unlinked (removed) should be suppressed. Although this is historical
     practice, this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 does not permit the -f
     option to suppress such messages."

> I am not a fan of providing seat belts like this. People concerned about =
this,=20
> can "alias rm 'rm -i'" etc. etc. Others have commented like this ...
>=20
> If you still have to make this change, make it tuneable with a environmen=
t=20
> variable (and make it default to off).

I'd prefer that too.

Ceri
--=20
It is not tinfoil, it is my new skin.  I am a robot.

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