Linda Walsh writes: > > Alan Curry wrote: > > Linda Walsh writes: > >> So far no one has addressed when the change in "-f' went in > >> NOT to ignore the non-deletable dir "." and continue recursive delete, > > > > In the historic sources I pointed out earlier (4.3BSD and 4.3BSD-Reno) the > > -f > > option is not consulted before rejecting removal of "." so I don't think the > > change you're referring to is a change at all. -f never had the effect you > > think it should have. > > > If I was using BSD, I would agree. > --- > But most of my usage has been on SysV compats Solaris, SGI, Linux, a short > while on SunOS back in the late 80's, but that would have been before it > changed anyway.
SGI is dead, Sun is dead, the game's over, we're the winners, and our rm has been this way forever. > > For all i know it could have been a vendor addin, but that's > not the whole point here. > > Do you want to support making "." illegal for all > gnu utils for addressing content? I don't think "addressing content" is a clearly defined operation, no matter how many times you repeat it. Consistency between tools is a good thing, but consistency between OSes is also good, and we'd be losing that if any change was made to GNU rm's default behavior. Even OpenSolaris has the restriction: see lines 160-170 of http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/cmd/rm/rm.c > > I think you'll find many more people against the idea and wondering > why it's in 'rm' and why "-f" doesn't really mean ignore all the errors > it can and why that one should be specially treated. Of course they also > might > wonder why rm doesn't follow the necessary algorithm for deleting files -- > and delete contents before dying issuing an error for being unable to delete > a parent. Which might also raise why -f shouldn't be usable to silence > permission > or access errors as it was designed to. Look, I agree isn't not logical or elegant. But we have a standard that all current Unices are obeying, and logic and elegance alone aren't enough to justify changing that. A new option that you can put in an alias is really the most realistic goal. -- Alan Curry
