what does "rm //" delete?

[Oliver Fuchs]

On Sun, 28 Nov 2004, Mark Ovens wrote:

> Oliver Fuchs wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >I had a directory which contained the following:
> >
> >ls showed me simple this: "?" with 0 bytes
> >ls -axl showed me nothing
> >
> >So I tried to delete the directory but could not succeed with "rm -R"
> >because the "directory is not empty". I changed to the directory and tried
> >to delete everything inside with "rm *" but also did not succeed. It seemed
> >that the file had no name. So than I did a mistake and wanted to delete the
> >file with no name with the operation:
> >
> >rm -R //
> >
> >This was a big mistake which I noticed soon enough (some files in /bin were
> >deleted). I could repair the damage but what I want to know is what exactly
> >is
> >
> >rm -R //
> >
> >deleting. It seems that it is deleting everything?
> >
> 
> It is, you're  recursively deleting / - multiple '/' are treated as one; try
> 
> cd //usr//bin

Yes, it was a hurtful expirience but now I
know that rm // is the same as rm /

> 
> To delete the rogue file try
> 
> rm -i *
> 
> in the directory the file is in, answering 'n' for all other files.
> 
> If that fails, try copying everything you need in the directory it is in 
> to somewhere else then recursively deleting the directory
> 
> rm -rf /path/to/dir/with/rogue/file

Tried it but had no chance.
In any case I had to formate that drive new so I finally made it to
disappear.
This was a confisung day in the life of my FreeBSD system.

So thank you again for helping and answering.

Oliver

> 
> HTH
> 
> Mark
> 
> >Thanx in advance
> >
> >Oliver
> >
> 
> 
> 
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