rm(1) bug, possibly serious

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Sep 26), Oliver Fromme said:
> Bob Johnson wrote:
>  > Oliver Fromme wrote:
>  > > By the way, an additional confusion is that ".." and "../"
>  > > are handled differently.  Specifying ".." always leads to
>  > > this message:
>  > > 
>  > > rm: "." and ".." may not be removed
>  > > 
>  > > and nothing is actually removed.  It is confusing that adding a
>  > > slash leads to a different error message _and_ removal of the
>  > > contents of the parent directory.  Clearly a POLA violation.
>  > 
>  > Maybe. But I expect that the behavior for "rm -rf .." is there so
>  > that things don't get REALLY astonishing when you do "rm -rf *".
> 
> The expansion of "*" does not include "." or "..".

Under /bin/sh, ".*" does match "." and "..", so be careful :)

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com