Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 18:31:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Protection from the dreaded "rm -fr /" Message-ID: <200410060131.i961V0pw047974@apollo.backplane.com> References: <20041002081928.GA21439@gothmog.gr> <200410021123.59811.max@love2party.net> <20041002083336.GA10355@k7.mavetju> <20041002101842.GA23272@gothmog.gr> <20041005103123.C46325@duey.wolves.k12.mo.us>
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Yow. 78 messages and counting. Er, 79 now. I'll bet poor Giorgos
wishes he never started this thread! Get ready..... get set.... DIVE!
A good friend of mine has, for at least the last two decades, used
something along the lines of:
if ( $?prompt ) then
alias rm 'mv \!* $HOME/misc/trash'
endif
However, it seems that the correct solution is to create a new option,
-I, which puts rm into 'idiot user mode' and has all the desired
confirmation effects listed in this thread and none of the undesired
effects such as -i returns. Then if anyone wants to use it they
can just create an alias similar to the above for -I and poof, problem
solved. It's fairly easy to detect '*' and ask for confirmation,
and also easy to ask for a single confirmation on a directory (not
ask again for any recursion).
Then you guys can argue over whether the alias should appear in the
system-wide default csh.cshrc and friends, rather then argue over
the destruction of rm's basic nature. I will only point out that 'rm'
is used fairly universally in scripts and there are obviously things
other then '/' that you would want to ask confirmation for that just
as obviously cannot be made default operation for rm.
-Matt
Matthew Dillon
<dillon@backplane.com>
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