On Thursday 11 March 2004 01:31, Peter Jeremy wrote: > On 2004-Mar-11 11:14:01 +1100, Gregory Bond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >The key phrase here is "What does vim do here _that rm doesn't_?" > > > >If vim is also just using unlink() then rm can (theoretically) do the job > > just as well. It seems like really odd advice to say "use vim because rm > > can't do the job." If this were in any way true, then I'd call that a > > serious bug in rm. > > If the filename to delete includes non-printing or magic-to-the-shell > characters (and especially ones with the top bit set), it can be > difficult to specify the filename as a command-line argument to rm(1). > In these cases, directory-editing modes in editors (or a scripting > language like perl) can be very helpful. > > This isn't a bug in rm(1) and is not necessarily a bug in the shell. > It is fairly common when [l]users use GUI tools to create files or > use sockaddr_in addresses on AF_UNIX sockets - which I've seen done.
However, I can confirm from experience that rm (-f) won't remove a file that's affected by a filesystem error like the one described in this thread. You'll just get back "<filename>: bad file descriptor" and that's it. The last time this happened to me, the affected file was a directory called "tmp" - hardly any weird characters in that one. -- ,_, | Michael Nottebrock | [EMAIL PROTECTED] (/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve | http://www.freebsd.org \u/ | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org
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