OT: the rm bug hit me again

Cameron Simpson cs at zip.com.au
Wed Oct 25 01:04:28 UTC 2006


On 24Oct2006 19:50, Joe Klemmer <klemmerj at webtrek.com> wrote:
| 	I alomst hate to admit it but the rm bug bit me for the second 
| time in my life over the weekend.  The first time was back, oh, late '94 I 
| think.  But everyone gets bit by this at least once in their *NIX career. 

If you use a zsh instead of a bash you can get it to ask when it sees
"rm *" like commands. The RM_STAR_SILENT and RM_STAR_WAIT options.

| But my braindead brain was cleaning out some redundant gunk in /usr/lib 
| (like all the versions of firefox and mozilla laying around).  You know 
| what's coming...
| 
| # cd /usr/lib
| # rm -fR mozilla *
|                 ^-------- There was supposed to be a "." there.

Well the "." is so small and hard to aim at...

| I caught it quickly but not before it whacked some GNOME junk (what the 
| heck is a bonobo?).

bonobo is for bidirectional text support AFAIR.

| 	Oh well, guess it was my turn to play "crusty old phart who does 
| stupid newbie move" today.  :-)

The core skill I learnt as a sysadmin was not "don't do rm *" but "pause
and THINK before pressing return".

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

What's the difference between sensual and kinky?
A feather is sensual.  The whole chicken is kinky.




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