On May 22, 3:46 pm, Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 6:22 AM, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Xah wrote: > > «In the emacs case: “Recursive delete of xx? (y or n) ”, what could it > > possibly mean by the word “recursive” there? Like, it might delete the > > directory but not delete all files in it? > > » > > > Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote: > >> It might *try* to delete the directory but not any of its contents, > >> yes. > > > you mean theoretically you see a possibility if the dir is implement > > as stilted as unix, but never in your life you find yourself might > > want to do it? > > There's a difference between working with a directory itself and > working with files inside it. Generally, if you copy or delete a > directory, you will want to recurse. But if you want to, for instance, > wipe out all files whose names end with a tilde, then you might want > to recurse and you might not. So it makes sense to offer the user a > choice, and if recursive action is the only one that makes sense, at > least acknowledge that the operation might take an arbitrarily long > time. (Ever done a recursive operation on / on a large file system? > Takes just a little bit longer than a non-recursive one under the same > circumstances...)
the context is this: In emacs directory manager (aka dired), when you call dired-do-delete on a directory, emacs prompts, this way: “Recursive delete of xx? (y or n)” Xah -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
