Bernhard Voelker wrote:
On September 6, 2012 at 12:56 PM Linda Walsh <coreut...@tlinx.org> wrote:
Jim Meyering wrote:
Thanks for the patch, but it would be pretty rotten for GNU rm to make
it so "rm -rf ." deletes everything under ".", while all other vendor
rm programs diagnose the POSIX-mandated error. People would curse us
for making GNU rm remove their precious files when they accidentally ran
that command.
---
Just like people who ran "rm -fr * in /" and didn't get their POSIX
mandated behavior, would curse you?
You are playing Mommy, to people and not allowing them to do what
they are asking the computer to do.
[... and ~40 lines re. Jim, GNU, POSIX, the universe ...]
Dear Linda,
why don't you stick to the point?
----
I wasn't the one who raised the point of people
cursing Gnu for removing their precious when they accidently or deliberately
tried to invoked rm in a way to generate a non-functional behavior.
If we were going to talk about them cursing gnu, I thought
I would fully put it in perspective.
That's what that exposé was about.
Note -- that it wasn't personally directly, and included listed
facts for a stronger counterpoint to what, admittedly, was likely a lightly
given reason for not changing a default behavior. It was addressing
that comment, alone.
You want an on-point counter proposal:
Might I suggest this as a rational counter proposal.
If the user issues rm -r ., it issues a warning:
"Do you really wish to remove all files under '.'"?
That won't break compatible behavior. Only if the user chooses
the non-default 'force' option "do what I say and shut up", which is not
a default option", would it do the action I suggest.
In any case, if POSIX_CORRECTLY is set, it will act as per POSIX
requirements.
It is TELLING, and important to understand Jim's statement
" Very few people ever set that envvar." Most people don't want strict POSIX
compatbility -- for reasons exactly like this -- the POSIX isn't about
usability, it's
about program portability. So for interactive use, it wouldn't be something
most
people would want to use.
