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From: rapin@bnrmtv.UUCP (Eric Rapin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: suggest solutions for "rm *"
Message-ID: <3147@bnrmtv.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Nov-87 13:30:15 EST
Article-I.D.: bnrmtv.3147
Posted: Tue Nov 24 13:30:15 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Nov-87 16:56:22 EST
References: <5715@j.cc.purdue.edu> <911@mcgill-vision.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Bell Northern Research, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 38
Keywords: human factors, interfaces, shells
Summary: And then there are those who...

In article <911@mcgill-vision.UUCP>,mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) writes:
> 
> This avoids the familiarity/fatigue factor of aliasing rm to rm -i
> (there are tales of people who type "rm *" and answer "yes" for every
> file on the list because they are so used to doing so).  The question
> is asked only when appropriate.
> 					der Mouse
> 
> 				(mouse@mcgill-vision.uucp)

And then there are those who alias rm to rm -i and then do things like:

	% yes | rm *

Hard to stop once it gets going, but you do get to be suitably horrified
watching it ask if it should remove files and then it mysteriously continues!

I would agree with whoever suggested that aliasing rm to rm -i is
dangerous, especially for people who change accounts and/or systems frequently.
Somehow it is so easy to forget that rm only interrogates because
you forced it to instead of doing it by default. (even though I do it
myself, it seems to not be too dangerous since all my new accounts
never have many files in them...at least not until I've discovered
that I missed one of my favorite aliases :')
I always find myself doing this:

	% \rm -f *

when I REALLY know what I'm doing, otherwise I've forced myself into the habit
of reading each file name before typing 'y'. It's a hard learned discipline
that you should only need to learn once, but most of us hate to break
habits... :')


-- 
Eric B. Rapin		     UUCP: {3comvax,amdahl,ames,csi,hplabs}!bnrmtv!rapin
Bell-Northern Research, Inc. ARPA: bnrmtv!rapin@ames.arpa
Mountain View, California
                 - Don't sweat it, it's only ones and zeros. -