On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 12:28:21PM +0300, Benson Muite wrote: > On 2/14/23 01:29, Robert Viragh wrote: ... > > Is it worth submitting a high-quality pull request to add a --dry-run flag > > to the basic Linux rm command (rm --dry-run -rf) ... > Am not a maintainer, but as a user this seems like it would be helpful > for people new to the command line. Such a patch may increase the > maintenance burden.
This would also be helpful for more experienced scripters. I often give my scripts a -n option, to serve as a dry run option. Now i need to have code to echo the 'rm'-statements for this case. If 'rm' would support --dry-run, then that would mean less scripting and it would be more precise too. One thing to note is that --dry-run should be affected by the verbosity (-v). Without -v, nothing should be done on the filesystem. With -v, do nothing and echo what would be done. Other options, like -f, -r and -i also may need some thought w.r.t. --dry-run. The short form could be -s. Alternatives --simulate, ... 'apt-get' uses these. Other utilities might also profit from such an option, e.g. 'mv'. But i am not a maintainer either. -- Regards, Mike Jonkmans
