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From: raymond@math.berkeley.edu (Raymond Chen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: Protection from "rm *"
Message-ID: <1990Oct1.032855.29278@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 1 Oct 90 03:28:55 GMT
References: <853@agcsun.UUCP> <8294@milton.u.washington.edu> <1987@sixhub.UUCP>
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Reply-To: raymond@math.berkeley.edu (Raymond Chen)
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In-Reply-To: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr)

I agree with Mr. Davidsen.  Don't alias a system command.  Write
your own "safe rm", call it "can" or "del" or "era", then put the
following in your private bin directory under the name "rm":

	#!/bin/sh
	echo "Don't use rm.  Use del.  If you really want rm, use /bin/rm"

Too often, I've seen people who have a private little rm alias, who
start relying on the -i option, then one day, they do a shell escape
	!rm *
hoping to get the automatic "-i" option, and (oops!) the alias wasn't
active (because they put it in their .login, not their .cshrc), or
the application uses /bin/sh to handle shell escapes, or...
(Heck, it happened to a friend of mine just last week...)