Protection from the dreaded "rm -fr /"

[Ceri Davies]

On Sat, Oct 02, 2004 at 11:23:52AM +0200, Max Laier wrote:
> [ Sorry to be so negative ... ]
> 
> At very least you should consider to error out silently as POSIX requires "-f" 
> to be silent. Other than that you should really look into the standards and 
> 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, 
> can "alias rm 'rm -i'" etc. etc. Others have commented like this ...
> 
> If you still have to make this change, make it tuneable with a environment 
> variable (and make it default to off).

I'd prefer that too.

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