On 09/04/2012 04:21 PM, Linda A. Walsh wrote:> Paul Eggert wrote: > expecting it to do nothing useful other than issue an error?
Sure. People might expect the utility to complain about what they consider to be obvious typos, rather than to remove files they don't expect to be removed. For example: rm -fr .* safely removes all file names beginning with "." in the working directory, without inadvertently removing file names that do not begin with ".", or files in the parent directory. I can see people being used to this sort of thing, and being annoyed greatly if we change it. > Ok, will foo/ remove the contents only and not the directory? No, "rm -fr foo/" removes the directory too. > It seems so fragile -- because some utils require the /. to make > sure you don't ALSO remove the directory. Which utilities are those? The standard POSIX style is that foo/ names the directory. > However, adding foo/ -- does that imply that ./ will also work? No, "./" is treated as ".". Sorry.
