cvs commit: src/bin/rm rm.1 rm.c

[Max Laier]

On Monday 04 October 2004 13:51, I wrote:
> On Monday 04 October 2004 13:26, Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote:
> > des         2004-10-04 11:26:02 UTC
> >
> >   FreeBSD src repository
> >
> >   Modified files:
> >     bin/rm               rm.1 rm.c
> >   Log:
> >   Find out how flame-proof my underwear really is.
>
> From the committer-guide:
> "Good commit messages are important. They tell others why you did the
> changes you did, not just right here and now, but months or years from now
> when someone wonders why some seemingly illogical or inefficient piece of
> code snuck into your source file."
>
> Other than that, this seems to be an outcome of the *ongoing* thread in
> hackers. If there is any consensus in that thread, then it's that every
> such goof should be conditionalized by a environment variable.
>
> Any particular reason for this change? Any added value in this warning (I
> fail to see)?

You never answered to this question. Neither on the list nor in your very rude 
private mail.

While it is true that this change does nothing bad, I still completely fail to 
see the point. I mean, hooray! you fixed one of a thousand ways to accidently 
delete "/". Unfortunately it's seldom the obvious way that this happens. 
Scripts might try to expand a variable that isn't there and do:
 rm -rf /${path}/
your "fix" won't help here. Or somebody types:
 rm -rf some_path /*
      ^
    extra whitespace due to unfortunate use of tab-completion

your "fix" doesn't help either. And so forth. So all the gain from this is 
added processing time, added code and an ego-boost for you (it seems to me).

> >   Revision  Changes    Path
> >   1.30      +2 -1      src/bin/rm/rm.1
> >   1.49      +23 -0     src/bin/rm/rm.c

-- 
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