Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Unix/VMS "wars" & Machine MIPS "ratings"
Message-ID: <2413@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 19 Mar 88 19:35:52 GMT
References: <36568QAA@PSUVM>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 15

In article <36568QAA@PSUVM> QAA@PSUVM.BITNET writes:
>To all UNIX lovers - give me ONE good reason why "rm" is better than "delete"
>to delete a file.

The VMS "delete" command has some serious flaws.  It can't recursively
delete a directory subtree.  It will also blindly delete a file even if
it has multiple directory entries for it, thus invalidating them with
no warning to the user.  (This is really a VMS file system problem.)
Also, "delete" simply aborts with an error if the file that the user
wanted to delete is write-protected, instead of allowing the user to
override the protection as the UNIX "rm" command does.

While VMS does have some interesting and useful features, its "delete"
command is surely not one of its strong points.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi